Good evening

everyone.

My

name is Caleb Rosico, and I'm the project manager for the consulting team.

I wanted to very briefly give you a little background in terms of who we are, and then talk about the purpose of the meeting tonight and really your opportunity to help to help shape this Code Spartan Bird process.

The process of rewriting the zoning code is led by a collaborative firm led by TSW.

We are an Atlanta-based planning architecture and landscape architecture firm.

We also do have another firm joining me, Code Studio.

Christy Dotson is going to be helping in some of the codification work.

And then very importantly, because zoning really has more than just has a lot of technical aspects.

We do have a local market analyst from upstate, Erin Arnett with Arnett Mulro.

We have Andy Gowder at the top right.

He is a zoning attorney out of Charleston.

And then very importantly, the two bottom figures on the right, they are with a company out of New York called Innerborough, who's going to be helping put together some of the newsletters that you may have seen and some of the more creative, creative opportunities.

Collectively, our team has worked all across the country and especially in the Southeast on similar types of zoning ordinance updates and development code updates.

We have worked in communities as small as 400 to as small large as 4 million.

But one thing I wanted to commit to you as the stakeholders of Spartanburg is that every single code that we do, every single code that we write is unique and tailored to the specific needs of the community.

And so even though we have worked in communities large and small, we believe very strongly as our commitment to you in terms of reflecting the unique character of Spartanburg to give you a code that is truly customized and written for the community.

Now we're going to be doing that over the next approximately 14 months.

We are going to start with a process that begins with a diagnosis of the current zoning code, and we'll be talking about that tonight.

We are then going to develop a framework or a blue parent for updating your code and then ultimately begin the actual drafting process and finally move into the adoption process late next year.

The idea behind our approach is that we believe very strongly that zoning processes need to work from move from very general to very specific.

And it's sort of like buying a hat or designing a hat.

You may know that you need a hat, but you may not know what exactly type of hat you want.

And so you may say, well, I want a cowboy hat, I want a fedora, I want this and that.

Ultimately, you go through a process of determining what works, what doesn't work, tweaking the standards a little bit, and finally designing your hat, or in this case giving you a zoning code tailored to the unique needs of Spartanburg.

And I wanted to commit to you again, as your consultant team leader, that your help is absolutely fundamental to getting this code done and getting this code done directly.

You are going to be partners from today on through the end of the process, and we're committed, as friendly mentioned, to an open, honest, and inclusive process wherein you share your ideas with us, we truly listen, we truly read your comments, and ultimately we hope that when the code is adopted, you'll be able to see your remarks

in there.

So what we wanted to do this evening is really do four exercises.

The first thing we wanted to do was to explain to those of you who may not be very familiar with zoning what exactly zoning is.

Why are we here?

Why are we talking about updating zoning code?

We're then going to go very briefly and talk a little bit about some of our findings today, noting that our findings are very preliminary, very draft, and ultimately will be finalized based on the feedback we get from you.

And then very importantly, we're going to break into a series of exercises where you can respond to what we've said, share your thoughts, and tell us stuff that we may have missed.

So with that said, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Christy Dodson, to walk through a little bit of background and zoning and how we got here.

Thank you.

Thanks, Caleb.

So as Caleb mentioned, my name's Christy Dotson, and I'm going to walk us through a pretty high level of zoning 101 just to give a bit of literacy for those in the room that haven't worked with zoning much.

Just as a raise of hand, who has read your current code of ordinances, your current zoning ordinances?

So we have pretty pretty good recognition of what zoning is, maybe a little bit of what zoning does in the room.

So some of these will be some of the things I'll talk about will be familiar to you, but I'm going to go through again at a high level just so we're all on the same page and have sort of a vocabulary of terms that we're all familiar with.

So the first thing I want you to do is just take a minute and think about some of the words that come to mind when you think about describing the goals for your community.

It may be in your neighborhood, it may be downtown.

So just think of a few words that come to

mind.

Some of those words could be things like vibrant, inclusive, walkable, welcoming, affordable, delightful, close to amenities, safe, good schools.

These are all things that you know, especially if you were involved in the comprehensive planning process, these are the sorts of ideas and vision that we think about for the future of your community.

You may have had other words that weren't included here, these are just a few examples.

And part of what I want to link for you today is what is the role of zoning in realizing some of these goals.

And

so some of the other things I want you to think about as I have this conversation with you, and as you go around the room today, do you ever wonder why main streets with local businesses?

You know, you have a great main street here, you have a tons of local businesses, but that's not always that common, right?

Like you have one part of the city that has that, but if you have other parts of the city where commercial corridors with large chains, large chain retailers, restaurants, stores where those are more common.

Why is that?

Are there certain things in the regulation that makes you know things like your downtown less common and things like these larger chains more common?

And

then a similar vein,

you

know, why do you see certain types of housing that are rarely built, or maybe that were built at a certain period of time.