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Originally Posted by Orlando
Not me. Too oversimplified.
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Salt Lake has way more zones than almost any city in the US of similar size. It needs to be substantially simplified.
There is no reason a downtown that is only about 1-2 square miles should have 4 different zones. Especially when there is a a dozen mid-density zones directly surrounding it. Plus really only D-1 is actually acting like a downtown district right now anyway. D-2 and D-3 are practically mid-density zones.
This could benefit the city and developers because then there wouldn't be the need to go through tons of rezones in the future.
For the warehouse district, if we want to keep it somewhat distinct, Salt Lake could make it the single Central Business District (D-1) Zone and then create a Zoning Overlay restricting things like design, building materials, etc. that would be more beneficial to creating a cohesive district than the broad CG Zone does (which really only hampers development and will give us a bunch of 5 over 1s). Many notable warehouse districts have towers and skyscrapers that our current zoning code would not permit in the area.
Also, don't forget that the recently discussed concept for the Rio Grande area includes allowing towers basically bringing 'downtown' almost to I-15 anyway:
Wouldn't it make more sense to just zone the areas in-between for the same type of development (especially since it would only be separated by 2-3 blocks between the D-1 and the Rio Grande area)?
Why waste all of the land that's left in the middle to mid-rises when we could open it up and free developers to build all types of projects instead.