Forsyth County officials are looking into new rules that they hope would increase the quality of developments and save greenspace.
At a work session on Tuesday, commissioners heard an update and gave their thoughts on proposed changes to rules for conservation subdivisions, neighborhoods planned to preserve open space, and voted to bring the discussion back to a future work session once changes are made.
Heather Ryan, a county planning manager, led the discussion of the proposals, which included looking at the minimum land area for the developments; adding which existing sites and features on land should be preserved; procedural changes and incentives for developers to build a conservation subdivision including moving to an average lot size rather than a minimum lot size; allowing alternative yield plans; and increased units.
Previous rules were approved in November which included a minimum of 40% open space and other changes.
During the commissioners’ discussion on Tuesday, there was some concern that the 40% requirement might be too high and scare away developers.
District 1 Commissioner Molly Cooper, who has been a part of meetings involving citizens, developers and members of the county’s planning commission to come up with the new standards, which include a list of resources the county officials want to be protected in exchange for lowering the open space requirement to as much as 30%.
“What’s changed on it … is it is based specifically on preservation of natural resources,” Cooper said. “That’s the base, and I don’t think that was the base before. This time it is, and you get more credit for, say, the specimen trees that you save.”
Cooper said it would be a “give and take” between commissioners and developers.
“What I’d like to see with this is that the developer comes in with their plan and we work with them, we have our criteria, but we work with them to try to fit things in, like I said, with the impetus being on the preservation of natural resources,” she said.
The board also discussed that rather than using the traditional yield method – which the county currently follows – to have the option of an adjusted tract acreage method, a calculation that takes into account total acreage, constrained acreage and density to determine the maximum number of lots allowed.
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June 27, 2020 at 04:00PM
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How commissioners want new developments to maintain greenspace - Forsyth County News Online
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