[bob rulz]

Originally Posted by Blah_Amazing

Are these heights with Design Review or 'by right'?

Also, does anyone know why D-2 is singled out to have a lower height than the GMU? Why? I mean D-2 is State Street, Main Street and West Temple from 650 to around 900 S.

Again, Salt Lake's zoning proves to be overly complicated and over regulated. Just make all of the downtown zones the CBD and provide a little bit of buffer rezones if needed around the low density areas.

Otherwise, all you are going to get in the future is either underutilized land in the D-2, D-3, D-4 and I guess GMU zones with their arbitrarily set heights, oooorrr the city is going to be stuck with a lot of filings for rezones to D-1 or from one downtown zone to another and spending months or years in the process. Salt Lake would save itself and developers a whole lot of time, money, and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere by just admitting that a city the size of Salt Lake doesn't warrant this many downtown zones and these kind of nonsensical height restrictions.

I have great respect for the Planning Department, but they have a large tendency to overcomplicate and overregulate. While I appreciate that in certain circumstances, in this I think they are actually hurting rather than helping Downtown. All that said, I am glad of the height bumps. Yay!

These are the maximums with design review. I didn't look at by right, because additional height through design review is almost never denied anyway, and if a developer wants the extra height, they'll pursue it and they'll get it. I do think the by right heights were increased too, though (except in D-1). I don't disagree that our downtown zoning is needlessly complicated. If it were up to me, I would simplify it greatly. But it's still a huge improvement over what existed before and there will certainly be developers taking advantage of this at some point in the near future.