Translating zoning-speak

By Scott Monroe

PUD and PRD. Ridgeline and hillside and fluvial erosion hazard overlay districts. Conditional change of use and clearcutting. Ingress and egress, curbcut and greenbelt, viewsheds and screening and watercourses and setbacks and dwelling units. And don’t forget density requirements and applicable lot coverage.

Um, what?

If you don’t know what most of those terms mean, I don’t blame you. It’s a sampling of many words I’ve become familiar with these last four and a half years as a reporter covering and writing about development.

It’s what I call zoning-speak: a specialized language used by the development and zoning community.

When I started at the Stowe Reporter, understanding these terms was a big challenge. In fact, it was a barrier. Who were these people talking in code and pointing long sticks at complicated, multilayered maps? Why can’t they say, “driveway,” “grass,” “road,” and “house”?

I’ve learned a lot in four and a half years. That’s not to say I’m a zoning expert today; I’m most certainly not. But I now know enough to be able decode most of the zoning-speak and, more importantly, explain it.

One of the most important jobs for a reporter is to be able to translate, to be an interpreter of these foreign languages. It’s not just zoning. Town government has its own language of invented, bureaucratic words and acronyms — “net budget,” “RFP,” and “fee schedule” come to mind.

So, too, does the news biz have its own language; inside our building here at 49 School St. you’ll hear us toss around many gems — “PDFing,” “Quark page,” “heds, subheds, dropheds, deckheds, overlines, leading, slugs, newshole, nut graf, lede, dingbats” and on and on.

When it comes to development, I’m aiming to translate zoning-speak into plain English for all our readers. I’m using common words instead of “specialized” ones.

A “greenbelt,” I have learned, is not an advanced level of martial arts; it’s a strip of grass. A “viewshed” is not an old lean-to in the back yard that contains hanging art; it’s what you can see from a particular direction.

And then there are the many, many acronyms. PUD stands for planned unit development; it’s land that’s developed in a single project, usually for commercial purposes, such as new a cluster of new buildings for stores and restaurants. There’s also a Ski PUD that applies to specifically to Stowe Mountain Resort. The PUD is not to be confused with PRD, a planned residential development (also known as a residential planned unit development), which focuses on the development of houses, condos or apartments in a single project.

When I wrote this week about the town’s zoning regulation overhaul I tried to take the code language and explain it simply. This particular story was easier than most; it focused mostly on parking and traffic issues and was based on a public hearing.

Most of the proposed zoning changes were approved this week. By clicking on that link, you can read Stowe’s zoning-speak in all of its glory in the 180-page zoning regulations. Have fun. Don’t operate heavy machinery while reading.

Plenty of zoning stories I’ve written have required a fair amount of translation. Issues of site density, internal and external setbacks, and buffer zones are pretty tough to explain short and simply.

Take “Piecasso plans slip on grass” from May 17, 2007. The issue, as I saw it, was that the Development Review Board was “concerned about loss of grassy space for parking” at the Piecasso restaurant, which planned an expansion of its seating and parking lot. That’s not exactly what the review board members said, but that’s basically what they meant when they bemoaned the elimination of “green space” and a “greenbelt” that served as a “buffer” for adjacent properties.

Complicating matters was the parking lot, the mathematical formulas involved, and how many parking spaces the restaurant needs. Zoning rules spell that out — one space for every three seats in the restaurant, plus one space for each person employed at the restaurant during the busiest times. The rules also allow the board to require more — or less — off-street parking than is normally required if there’s a “special condition” or “unique usage” to the property.

And here’s a doozy: “With approval of the (Development Review Board) the actual construction of parking spaces in lots requiring 50 or more parking spaces may be reduced by 20 percent. … All calculations shall be rounded up to the next whole number.”

Oh, yeah, and if there are “multiple uses” at the establishment, “the parking requirements may be reduced at the discretion” of the review board.

I can’t remember exactly, but I think the discussion of these various formulas and terms went on for at least one or two hours at the Development Review Board hearing.

And after all that talk about the parking lot, I decided on this explanation: Piecasso needed 64 spaces and eventually updated its plans to have 65. And the restaurant added more grass and trees to its plans.

How’s that for translation?