Development of UDO (reference)

Several action items within the 2010 Summerfield Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) include a review and rewrite of the current Summerfield Development Ordinance to better implement Comp Plan policies. The town initially contracted with Glen Harbeck Associates to lead a citizen advisory group to generate a rewrite draft called the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). The town followed up those efforts by contracting with N-Focus Planning to provide later legislative updates and the town attorney provided further legal review at that time.

The town appointed an ad-hoc UDO Review Committee in 2017 "to engage representative community stakeholders in a review of the current Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) draft’s substantive issues with the goal of shaping a final UDO draft that is more congruent with the current Comprehensive Plan." The UDO Review Committee discussed growth issues that affect development, reviewed both the Comp Plan and UDO for those issues, and met with experts during the process. The committee's challenging work was completed in May 2018, prior to the Zoning Board continuing work on the draft.

The Zoning Board completed its work in April 2021 following a legal review by the town attorney and an environmental review of relative sections provided by town engineers. The Piedmont Triad Regional Council (PTRC) was concurrently working on mandated legislative changes (referred to as "160D") and that work is now completed. A final public hearing was held 5/25/21, Council made several changes to better incentivize moderately-priced housing, the new UDO was adopted 6/8/21, and it went into effect 7/1/21. Other relevant links are provided below for anyone who wishes to dive deeper into the process and deliverables.