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New zoning laws to provide flexibility for development
Though often held up as a tool to “preserve the rural character” of the community, the old Putnam County Zoning Ordinance has often had the opposite of its intended effect.
For example, with the idea of not having farming ground taken over by rows of houses, the county long employed minimum lot sizes of five acres in the Agricultural 1 district and three acres in the Agriculutural 2 district.
Unfortunately, what often ended up happening was homes were built on larger lots, with the remainder of the lot simply sitting empty, no longer in service as farm fields. This remained the case even after the lot sizes were reduced to two acres and one acre, respectively, in 2022.
A lot has changed since this model was adopted by the county in 1992, and county officials are hopeful that the new unified development ordinance, which will take the place of the old zoning and subdivision control ordinances beginning on Jan. 1, will provide a more flexible approach.
“It’s a balance between predictability and flexibility,” County Plan Director Lisa Zeiner told the Banner Graphic. “It gives land owners and developers more flexibility while still anticipating growth.”
Such flexibility should come through a focus not on lot sizes but on population density. For example, while there are requirements regarding lot size, width and frontage in the new A1 and A2 district, they are less restrictive, with the main requirement being density — no more than one dwelling unit per 20 acres in A1 and no more than one unit per five acres in A2.
Likewise, the residential districts — there are now five — also hinge on density: One unit per acre in R1, 2.5 per acre in R2, five in R3, 10 in R4 and 18 in R5.
Additionally, flag lots — lots in which a residence is back a long lane that only connects to the road via a narrow corridor — were essentially a dirty word in the old zoning laws. Now they are allowed in rural subdivisions as a mechanism for maintaining good farm ground and using less favorable parts of the property for homes.
“So prime farm ground is going to remain and then put a home where you can’t farm it,” Zeiner said.
In a presentation to the Putnam County Commissioners on Nov. 20, Bryan Stumpf of Civic Blueprint, which developed the UDO for the county, showed how a rural subdivision would allow for three residential lots back one long lane, while maintaining the vast majority of farm ground in the area.
Zeiner said the hope is that the flexibility of the new ordinance will help alleviate the acknowledged housing shortage in the county, noting that Hendricks County and Danville particularly have managed to deal with development.
“It’s gotta come this way,” Zeiner said. “If surrounding counties aren’t having a housing problem, then why are we?”
Still, the focus remains on the homes in ag districts having as little impact as possible on agriculture and forestry.
More broadly, the UDO keeps an eye on land use in general by addressing mineral extraction, solar farms and wind farms. Specifically, changing a property to one of these uses will be handled as a rezone rather than a special exception. This will take such decisions out of the hands of the board of zoning appeals and put them into the hands of the plan commission and, ultimately, the county commissioners.
It is likely this would have led to a different outcome with the solar farm that the BZA denied earlier this year in Russell Township. County officials expect Cold Spring Solar Farm and developers Arevon and Tenaska to re-apply after the first of the year.
Likewise, with the UDO working more closely with the comprehensive plan approved earlier this year, approval processes are streamlined and clarified with processes working together to provide clear, concise and consistent land use decisions.
Zeiner noted that the BZA has consistently been busy over the years, which she said was an indication that the ordinance was not doing its job, leading to the need for lots of appeals.
The UDO addresses expanded topics such as transportation, infrastructure and natural resources. Zeiner said these issues were in the old comprehensive plan but it “hasn’t communicated well with the zoning ordinance.”
With HWC Engineering and partner Civic Blueprint developing the new ordinances together, those days should be over.
While many other issues are addressed in the 288-page document, the idea of being flexible is an undercurrent throughout so there isn’t another 30-year wait for a major overhaul.
“I’m sure there will be things five, 10, 20 years from now that we didn’t think about adding to it,” Zeiner said.
She said that the old document from 1992, and even the 2008 comprehensive plan, “was put on a shelf and not looked at again.”
That’s not the idea this time around, as this document will be more easily upgradable.
“We’re constantly using it, and the plan is every year to look at it and see how these documents are working for the county,” Zeiner said. “Are we meeting goals in the comp plan? Is there something better or worse?”
The UDO is also simpler to use than the old ordinance, even containing a user guide at the beginning.
With the process now done, Zeiner noted the praise Civic Blueprint gave to the steering committee in Putnam County, saying that the company was working on four different documents of this kind, but this one came together more quickly due to the work of the steering committee.
“We had a really diverse steering committee,” Zeiner said, noting contributions from farmers, foresters, realtors, housing developers, economic development and each town, including Greencastle, even though it will not be under the jurisdiction of the ordinance.
The UDO will be in effect for unincorporated areas as well as Bainbridge, Cloverdale, Roachdale and Russellville. Fillmore will continue to not have zoning.
Though Greencastle will continue to have its own zoning laws, the UDO does put the two-mile fringe surrounding the city in the control of the county as well.
For anyone wanting a better look at the new UDO and the new zoning map, links to both are available at https://co.putnam.in.us/building-and-planning.
These materials are also available at the Putnam County Building and Planning Office on the fourth floor of the Putnam County Courthouse. For more information, call 765-301-9108.
Come Jan. 1 the UDO will represent a major change not only in Zeiner’s office, but around the county. While she’s confident it will be for the better, she will use the number of cases coming before the BZA as an indicator.
“If we don’t have a lot of things coming before the BZA, that means it’s working in terms of the way people want to use their land,” Zeiner said.