PRESENTER: Presenter
Christopher J. Looney, AICP, Planning Director
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SUBJECT: Title
Update on the Land Development Ordinance
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DEPARTMENT: Neighborhood and Community Planning
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COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: All
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The Land Development Ordinance (LDO) is an update and consolidation of several development-related ordinances in the City’s Code of Ordinances, including Zoning, Subdivision Platting, Historic Preservation, and Signs.
Project goals include, but are not limited to:
• Implementing Envision New Braunfels and the Land Use Fiscal Analysis,
• Streamlining processes,
• Removing barriers to innovation and workforce housing,
• Ensuring consistency with state statute and Supreme Court rulings, and
• Modernizing outdated requirements.
ISSUE:
The process to update the development ordinances is heavily reliant on public input. The LDO is highly technical which drives public interest in the project. Hence, development community stakeholders tend to provide significant input. However, staff strongly values and is ensuring opportunities for all residents to provide input about how they want their neighborhoods and their community to develop over time.
The project has proceeded in “modules”: Zoning and Uses, Development Standards, Historic Preservation, Signs, and Procedures. Public meetings, presentations, open houses, surveys, and interactive online feedback on module drafts have occurred throughout the duration of the project. That input with suggestions, edits, etc. resulted in a Consolidated Draft which will soon be available online for public comment through early January, 2026. Public input on the consolidated draft will then be incorporated into a final adoption draft in the Spring.
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN REFERENCE:
• Strategy 1: Support Vibrant Centers
o A Special Place by Design: Adopt a unified development code that encourages great urban design for existing and future centers.
• Strategy 2: Activate Neighborhoods
o Aging in Place: housing that supports aging in the community; mobility options that support older motorists, pedestrians, transit riders and cyclists; public realm spaces and services that support both young and elderly populations; ensure that land use planning improves older-adult mobility through zoning enhancements that support the logical location of older-adult housing and services near transportation and mobility options; and nurture “third spaces” and other important sites and facilities that build social capital and foster aging supportive communities.
• Action 1.3: Encourage balanced and fiscally responsible land use patterns.
• Action 1.5: Promote economic centers by ensuring adequate parking for people to visit businesses/restaurants/shops.
• Action 1.6: Incentivize infill development and redevelopment to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
• Action 1.11: Update policies and codes to achieve development patterns that implement the goals of this plan.
• Action 1.15: Implement Downtown area improvements planned in the adopted 2010 Downtown Implementation Plan, and further envisioned in the South Castell Avenue Visioning Plan, including but not limited to a downtown hotel, increased downtown residential units, and expansion of the Civic/Convention Center.
• Action 2.1: Sustain community livability for all ages and economic backgrounds.
• Action 2.25: Increase resources for historic preservation.
• Action 2.26: Achieve and update Downtown Implementation Plan goals for quality places downtown and along South Castell Avenue.
• Action 2.33: Encourage vertical growth and development of key areas to take advantage of infrastructure capacity, maintain the core, and to discourage sprawl.
• Action 3.1: Plan for healthy jobs/housing balance.
• Action 3.6: Pro-actively provide a regulatory environment that remains business and resident friendly.
• Action 3.10: Change zoning/land use and platting rules, and create tax and permit fee incentives in underutilized neighborhoods, nodes, and corridors to encourage redevelopment.
• Action 3.13: Cultivate an environment where a healthy mix of different housing products at a range of sizes, affordability, densities, amenities and price points can be provided across the community as well as within individual developments.
• Action 3.15: Incentivize home development that is affordable and close to schools, jobs and transportation.
• Action 3.16: Review and revise regulations that inadvertently inhibit creative housing options or workforce housing alternatives.
• Action 3.17: Enact policies that dis-incentivize incompatible commercial encroachment into neighborhoods that whittle away at the edges, while still allowing for neighborhood scale commercial within walking distance of homes.
• Action 3.18: Encourage multi-family to disperse throughout the community rather than to congregate en masse.
• Action 3.19: Improve walkability across town to attract younger generations seeking pedestrian connections.
• Action 3.20: Encourage residential developments to include pedestrian and bicycle friendly trails to nearby schools, preferably within a 2-mile radius of each school.
• Action 3.23: Revise local ordinances so that they do not inadvertently inhibit development of venues in close proximity to neighborhoods and schools.
• Action 3.30: Encourage and incentivize workforce/affordable housing to attract new workforce entrants and young families
• Action 3.31: Adopt policies and ordinances supportive of workforce housing, creating opportunities that make investment in workforce housing more feasible for private and nonprofit developers.
• Action 4.1: Ensure parks and green spaces are within a one mile walk or bicycle ride for every household in New Braunfels.
• Action 5.2: Discourage development in Edwards Aquifer Recharge and contributing zones, stream zones, flood-prone areas, steep slopes, or other ecologically constrained areas. Where development in these areas must occur, require that it be environmentally sound using tools such as but not limited to low impact development (LID).
• Action 5.3: Amend codes to include incentives for developers to use LID tools such as permeable materials, rainwater harvesting, bio-swales, etc. Phase-in some as requirements over time.
• Action 5.6: Implement measures to achieve and maintain a high National Flood Insurance Program CRS rating to ensure the safety of all residents and to reduce property owner flood insurance rates.
• Action 5.8: Encourage native vegetation and remove non-native invasive species in natural riparian and enhanced drainage areas.
• Action 5.15: Ensure that developers adequately address drainage in their projects and developments.
• Action 5.17: Review and update Tree and Landscape ordinances to ensure New Braunfels remains a green city and expands its tree canopy.
• Action 5.27: Enhance city codes to encourage solar energy usage/ generation.
• Action 6.1: Coordinate local land use and housing plans with regional transportation investments to ensure the land uses are not inadvertently driving increased congestion without proportionate mitigation and context sensitive solutions.
• Action 6.2: Protect the airport from incompatible land use encroachment.
• Action 6.4: Consider how each new development project impacts the transportation system and ensure appropriate mitigation is implemented.
• Action 7.4: Strengthen sidewalk requirements in the City’s codes.
• Action 7.6: Design neighborhoods and subdivision development codes with schools and school access in mind.
• Action 7.7: Ensure that local development codes which require sidewalks, trails, lanes or paths include healthy living, safety, and vehicular congestion relief as an intent.
• Action 7.8: Enhance pedestrian quality of the City by limiting the realm of the automobile.
• Action 7.9: Enact/enforce maximum block size limitations.
• Action 7.10: Require more street connectivity/adopt connectivity ratios.
• Action 7.11: Allow for smaller/narrower streets and lot size variety within individual subdivisions.
• Action 7.14: Increase tree canopy for increased shade to encourage walking.
• Action 7.17: Implement traffic calming requirements in the development ordinances/ codes.
• Action 7.19: Improve connectivity for all modes of transportation including bicycles.
STRATEGIC PLAN REFERENCE:
☒Economic Mobility ☐Enhanced Connectivity ☒Community Identity
☐Organizational Excellence ☒Community Well-Being ☐N/A
• Objective: Incentivize mixed-use developments and redevelopments in targeted locations to create a built environment with integrated housing, commercial centers, and opportunities for improved connectivity.
• Objective: Adopt the new Land Development Ordinance that implements goals of our residents identified in Envision New Braunfels, including but not limited to protecting historic structures, preserving and increasing green space and tree canopy, protecting natural resources, and safeguarding the character, integrity, and stability of neighborhoods.
• Objective: Develop capital and staffing investments that improve safety, reduce heat islands, and encourage transportation modes that support healthier lifestyles and exercise such as biking, walking and running.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The City’s Land Use Fiscal Analysis (LUFA) indicates the city’s current codes and policies should be revised to allow and incentivize more infill, redevelopment, and mixed-use development. They should be aligned to support fiscal health and affordability. The standards should be improved to ensure it is efficient and cost-effective to build infill and compact development that produces the highest returns on investment for more efficient service delivery; and that ensures the city has a diverse mix of housing that is attractive and affordable to our residents.
Infill projects that add people and buildings in areas with existing infrastructure should be prioritized. And consideration should be given to the benefits of minimum heights rather than traditional maximum heights to decrease the overall commercial footprint, preserving additional space for development or greenspace, achieving the same value on a smaller footprint, and which would contribute to a higher quality of life with enhanced walkability, the ability to age in place, freedom for children to roam, less time stuck in traffic, housing options for different stages of life, and local economic opportunity.
Recommendation
RECOMMENDATION:
N/A
RESOURCE LINKS:
<https://newbraunfels.gov/3449/Land-Development-Ordinance>