Deep Dive: Boise is set to revamp its zoning code. What it means, what it doesn’t, and what’s to come

The City of Boise is set for a significant overhaul of its zoning code – the rules that underpin how citizens, developers, and businesses can use property within the city limits.

The project, which first launched under former Mayor Dave Bieter in 2019, and was relaunched in 2020 shortly after Boise Mayor Lauren McLean took office, involved a long process with a group of stakeholders from across the city — and ended with a dense 611-page document that runs nearly 200,000 words (about the length of the novel Moby Dick).

The proposal has already sparked public conversation – including from some people who have planted signs in their yards, which read “Zoned Up, Sold Out & Shut Up.”

The code vastly reworks the current set of rules, first adopted in 1966 and changed bit-by-bit over the intervening 57 years. Significant changes are proposed for the majority of the city’s residential neighborhoods, transit corridors, downtown areas, and others. At the same time, the code provides new side rails that would curtail some of the types of development that conjure feelings of the Pixar movie Up.

BoiseDev spent the last two weeks reviewing the zoning code document, asking questions of city staff, reviewing the existing comprehensive plan known as Blueprint Boise and viewing meetings of the zoning code rewrite committee to help form a holistic view of what is – and isn’t in the code.

The new zoning code is set to start a public process in front of the Boise Planning & Zoning Commission, which will hear public testimony over four nights next month. The P&Z Commission will make a recommendation – but it will be up to a final vote of the Boise City Council on whether to adopt the code, or not.

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Where we’ve been

When the city launched the effort in 2019, BoiseDev reported the aim was to better match the zoning code – the actual rules for development — with the comprehensive plan, the document that lays out the overall vision for the city’s growth.

The city under Bieter hand-picked a group of 12 individuals to sit on the zoning code rewrite advisory panel. The group was made up almost entirely of individuals with a direct link to development, many of whom were also donors to Bieter.

When McLean took office, she decided to drop the 12-member panel picked by Bieter, and instead opened up applications. That led to a 20-member advisory panel. Four of the members of Bieter were held over, while the other 16 names were different.

Over the past three years, the committee met more than two dozen times, with each of the meetings streamed live and archived on YouTube.

The city split the code into three modules, and after the draft of each one was complete, the city held a mix of in-person and online open houses, surveys, and outreach to groups like neighborhood associations.

What the city hopes the code will do

The 611 pages of the code rewrite are often highly technical, and the document doesn’t provide even an executive summary to help citizens understand what’s in the plan. It gets into the weeds you’d expect from legal city ordinance language, redefining the city’s zoning districts, the uses allowed in each area, the process for public input (or in some cases, not), design standards, parking, lighting, water, and more.

Tim Keane, the city’s Director of Planning & Development, who started last year after the city was several years into the process, said that he hoped in ten years, if the code is adopted, citizens look back and say it did several key things.

“One is that the ordinance has really resulted in a variety of housing that we weren’t getting before and it’s sustainably helping with the affordable housing issue,” he said. “The potential is for so many different kinds of people to participate in the growth of this city. (Currently) we have big apartment buildings and single homes, and we don’t have enough in between.”

He said the code could provide a path for individuals who own a home to benefit, as well as “individuals doing much smaller types of housing,” versus just a group of larger developers who can afford the cost, risk and time of building subdivisions or multi-family projects.

He said another key thing that he hopes the code sparks is better transportation connectivity and use.

“This city and this region are facing difficulties and challenges with how we tackle transportation,” he said. “(In ten years) people would say ‘now I see how if we grow in a certain way, we can invest in something other than highways.’ We can invest in people and have an impact in more people being able to walk and ride their bikes and invest in transit.”

And he sounded a note of caution, from where he sits.

“As we make decisions – if we don’t make different decisions – we’re really in trouble.”

What’s in the code

Reorganizing

Currently, the city’s zones are broken into 20 categories across five buckets: open land, residential, commercial, office and industrial. (There are also three specialty zones, for healthcare, Boise State University and a ‘pedestrian commercial’ zone).

The code rewrite would consolidate those twenty classifications to 17 – and, importantly, blur or revamp the buckets, meaning a previously ‘residential’ zone could allow some commercial uses, and most of the formerly ‘commercial’ and ‘office’ zones could allow some residential uses.

The new main buckets are residential and a new-to-the-code term: mixed-use.

The open land and industrial zones remain mostly distinct as they do now. The specialty pedestrian commercial zone is pulled into the mixed-use zoning, while the Boise State and healthcare zones remain.

A sight to R-1C

Boise Idaho neighborhood

Drilling into the code, a series of changes to a particular zone stand out.

It’s known as R-1C. The zone exists in the current code, as well as the new one. If a resident of a single-family home goes to the city’s online map tool and punches in their address, they are likely to see they live in the R-1C zoning now, and would if the code is adopted.

But the code proposes significant changes to the zoning.

It’s key, as 25% of all land in Boise is in this R-1C category, which the city currently calls “traditional residential.” It’s the largest residential zone, with 58% of land zoned residential falling in this category. Looking at a map of the city, most of the city’s neighborhoods are lit up in the bright yellow color – including most of the Bench, West Boise, Southeast Boise, and even portions of the north and east ends.

The new code proposes a significant change to the zoning. First, the name would change from “Single Family Residential, Urban” to “Residential: Traditional.” The types of use in the zones would expand from single-family detached homes and duplexes to additional housing types, including single-family attached homes, triplexes, and fourplexes.

Next, the density allowed in the zone would increase by more than 50% – from 8 units per acre now to 12.4 units in the proposal. The minimum size of a lot would shrink by 30% from 5,000 square feet to 3,500 square feet. (The current code calls for corner lots to be 7,000 square feet. The new code does not delineate between in-line and corner lots.)

The minimum frontage for homes in the zone would decrease by a third from 30 feet to 20 feet. Setbacks would also change slightly, and the maximum allowed height of buildings would go up by five feet, though the city is changing the way it measures height which would make the maximum height largely the same.

The changes also tweak the allowed uses, expanding from primarily only allowing single-family homes and duplexes to also allowing a few commercial uses – including neighborhood cafes, retail sales under 2,000 square feet, art galleries, museums, and a few others.

Looking at the changes, it’s easy to imagine a neighborhood rapidly increasing in density, with homes being torn down and replaced with a series of fourplexes on lot after lot. But Keane pointed out a key piece of the code that’s not immediately apparent: If a resident wants to build more than two units of housing on a lot, they have to make a concession:

“One of the things we changed last summer, is that if you go beyond two units (that are permitted now), if you do three or four — they have to be affordable at a certain level. Additional units are required to be for people making 80% of the AMI,” Keane said. “I can tear down a house, but I can only go to four total, and two of them have to be affordable.”

He said he went to a meeting last year, and citizens were concerned that a single house would be replaced by four, newer, more expensive homes – which if true, negates the city’s stated goal of providing more affordable housing.

“We felt that was legitimate. The shift was if you’re going to do more than two, the others have to be affordable. We’ve got to make sure that’s affordable because it’s so important to us.”

The 80% AMI standards apply if the units are for rent.

But if the units are made available for sale, the units would be restricted by deed to people making 120% of AMI.

The city alerted us to the 120% AMI standard after our initial interview – and while this is listed under the heading of “affordability,” homes sold at this level do not meet the city’s owned established guidelines for income and affordable rent, which tops out at 100% AMI.