Opening a penny arcade, a drive-in restaurant, a dry goods store or a telegraph office in D.C. is a clear-cut right under the current version of the District’s zoning regulations.
But try installing an environmentally friendly roof on your high-rise or attaching a cell phone antenna to the side of your building, and you’ll find the regulations are of little help.
The regulations manual for District development is far behind the times.
“We actually have some of the oldest, dare I say antiquated, zoning codes in the country,” D.C. Planning Director Harriet Tregoning said Monday.
Planning officials hope to change that over the next several years as they embark on the first comprehensive rewrite of the zoning regulations in a 50 years.
Though the process for the overhaul still is to be determined, the public comment process starts at 6:30 p.m. Thursday with the first of two roundtables before the D.C. Zoning Commission at 441 Fourth St. NW, Room 220 South.
While the recently updated, overarching Comprehensive Plan provides a broad outline of what neighborhoods should look like, the zoning regulations specifically control density, height, use, parking, loading and building design.
They are the legal toolused by the government to regulate the physical development of land and to separate various uses — industrial from residential, for example.
Today’s regulations, last updated in 1958, are a confounding patchwork of 50 years of amendments that can be extremely difficult to interpret, Tregoning said.
“[They are] a great boon for some D.C. law firms,” she said.
The discussions are likely to delve into the District’s building height limit, the appropriateness of dozens of overlay districts, the existence of a Planning Commission and the process for approval of development plans.
The rewrite is expected to take at least two years, not including the time required to remap various zoning districts.
