The city’s planning department is exploring the most significant changes to zoning regulations in almost 20 years, meant to boost housing stock and offer more flexibility to local developers who are trying to build more middle-housing options.
Columbus City Council members received a brief overview of what the changes to the zoning ordinance are trying to accomplish from Planning Director Jeff Bergman on Tuesday. The document outlining the new regulations is nearing a final draft and is set to be finalized before the end of this year.
Once a final draft is reached, there will be a public input process. Then would come formal adoption of the changes, which would begin in the plan commission and be considered by the council twice-over before everything is final.
The changes focus on flexibility around middle-housing products, meaning housing that generally falls between traditional single-family homes and large apartment complexes.
The city’s 2024 housing study and internal research by the planning department found that the city’s regulations, particularly around zoning, have not served as a significant barrier to housing. RDG Planning & Design, the consultant charged with conducting the housing study, pointed out that the city has done a good job in offering a housing-friendly regulatory environment.
While the zoning ordinance outlines clear regulatory processes and specifications for single-family homes and duplexes, as well as large apartment complexes, that’s not the case for housing options in the middle.
“What we found, (which is) typical for a lot of communities, is that single-family versus apartment complex divide that we find in our zoning regulations really permeates the structure of those regulations,” Bergman said. “It extends from where those types of housing are allowed to the procedure for getting them permitted to how many parking spaces are required when you do that sort of thing.”
“One of the challenges I think we found is how embedded that organizational structure is throughout the zoning ordinance,” Bergman went on. “It’s got a lot of tentacles that run through everything. We need to do a thorough and complete job about understanding that and rooting that out if we’re going to end up with a quality product.”
Maps put together by the planning department showed a significant amount of housing activity taking place in Columbus between 2020 and 2025, but basically all of that is single-family homes in large subdivisions, and large apartment developments, mostly downtown.
The remake of the zoning regulations is the most significant since 2008, Bergman said, and is being done completely in-house.
The changes involve the potential for some new zoning districts and differing development standards associated with zoning districts like the number of parking spots, but also changes to things such as permitted uses within different districts.
“It’s been our premiere project for probably the last couple years at this point,” Bergman said. “… The point is to open that regulatory door as wide as we can for diverse types of housing and making sure that everything we’re doing, including our process, sort of matches that diversity.”
The Columbus Plan Commission over the past year-plus has periodically talked through the potential changes. Bergman said planning staff is using the plan commission as a kind of steering committee to get feedback.
Planning staff took a hard look at the type of projects local developers —many of whom were in the council chambers Tuesday — were trying to do in Columbus, and sought to make realizing those more simple.
Everything that is three or more units is basically regulated the same way, whether a development is four-units or 400-units, Bergman said. The proposed changes will look to differentiate regulations, standards and paperwork between a four-unit project, 50-unit project, and 200-unit project, for example.
“Should the paperwork lift for a small apartment building be the same as it is for a 200-unit apartment complex? And I think clearly the answer is no,” Bergman observed.
But there’s only so much a local government can do to boost housing supply because much of it is up to the free-market, Bergman said.
Finding developable land at a reasonable price “is extremely challenging in our community, and has been for decades,” according to the planning director.
Bergman also said that planning staff is keeping an eye on House Bill 1001, a broad effort to curb local regulations and increase the state’s housing supply, but said that “much of what you find in that bill is consistent with the direction that we’ve been heading.”
