Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

plan commission meeting for October 23rd, 2025. It's 3:35 p.m. like the first order of business is uh the roll call. Council, sorry, I got Apologize. Uh, Mr. Sarah present. Mr. King, Mr. Hall here. Mr. Cook present. Mr. Miller, Mr. Harold present. Mr. Washington, Mr. Wilson here. Mr. Allen, present. So, we'll show with six members present, we do have a quorum to conduct business.

Great. Thank you very much. Uh, the next order of business uh is the approval of minutes. Uh and the agenda approval minutes from September 18th. Uh they are attached and everybody's had time to review them. Uh looking for a motion to approve uh the minutes from our last meeting. I make a motion to approve as stated. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any questions from commissioners? Directions? I'll just say I'm going to stayain because I wasn't here. That's fine. Appreciate that. Uh council roll call, please. All right, Mr. Wilson.

Here. Oh, yes. Okay. Mr. Cook, yes. Mr. Hall, abstain. Mr. Harold, abstain. I was not president the last meeting. Mr. Allen? Yes. We're not going to pass. Yes, you are. You need to call me. Uh, Mr. Sarah. Yes. Okay. So, we have five members voting. Oh, no. We have No, we only have four members voting yes. They're not going to pass if we Let me then restate. I will approve. Yes. Okay. He and I will each do a half vote. So, that's [Music]

all right. So, we'll show that uh with five members voting to approve and one abstaining. Uh the minutes from the last meeting are approved. Thank you. All right. Uh the we only have one item on our agenda public hearing. It's it's uh PCUDO which is the introduction to the city of Gary unified development ordinance. So we are going to have um a presentation from staff and uh we're going to exchange seats with staff. So we're going to sit the first couple rows and they're going to do the presentation. And just for clarification, it's not a public hearing. It's just the presentation. That's fine. Thank you. It was a public hearing portion of the meeting. Yes, it's just a presentation. So, there's no no public comments today.

Okay. Thank you. All right. So, uh we I don't think we need a break. We'll just exchange seats and get seats. I think

I'm at 3:30. It's 3:38. You know, you know they say you always want to start Um, This presentation will outline the major updates to the zoning ordinance which is the regulation that enforces the vision of the comprehensive plan. We placed a special focus on destination and mixed use zones highlighting keya key changes impacting growth corridors and neighborhood integrity. Okay, some may ask, why is this significant that the zoning ordinance is being updated? As it stands, the current zoning ordinance reflects outdated standards from past decades that are extremely restrictive to modern-day development and challenging to interpret. For example, as someone who reviews the ordinance often, it is challenging to interpret the ordinance due to it being convoluted with jargon that is incoh incompensible to lay men. Moreover, this update will offer benefits including supporting economic development and mixeduse vibrancy align with the comprehensive plan and the rebuild Gary strategy and promote

equity, sustainability, and smart growth. Our city is beginning to change and the regulations that guides us should reflect our current needs and future goals. I will now pass the mic to attorney Marco and Attorney Selena.

Okay, thank you. How do you clip this? Um, because I've never used one of these before. Um, let's see if I can clip it. If not, you all can probably hear me. I have a very loud voice. Um, my name is Salona Hayes and I'm going to just talk in general about the unified development ordinance. So, I'm coming from a perspective of Okay. Okay. Right here.

Y.

Thank you. I'm coming from a 30,000 foot perspective in a sense. So just giving you a little bit of an overview um before the particulars are going into the unified development ordinance. Um the key word for this is unity. So um I for some odd reason I keep thinking of the Queen Latifah song you ty. Uh this is one code uh one purpose for ease of understanding and the location of the zoning um laws. This code is going to replace all zoning code chapters uh such as 103, 115, 117, 121, and 123. Everything is consolidated into this one unified place. So, it's going to make it easier to understand. It's going to make it uh easier to find and look things up. Um again the main thing is unified development ordinance. Previously we had separated um airport ordinance or flood plane or environmental ordinances. Now it is in one place. Uh you're going to notice that there were going to be tables and graphics flowcharts um policy and definition for ease of understanding. Uh okay. Uh again, this is going to be in alignment with the state code um because the state code grants us authority to create this ordinance. So there's nothing in this ordinance that is intended to preempt other laws. Um it is uh applicable. Um the other state, federal and regulations are still applicable and it's not intended to interfere or abrogate or null any of those things. What you'll notice, what

is not here, is there a slide for that? What is not in this code um is technical standards. What's not in it is things such as food truck or mobile business laws, um general um business license um information. That's not going to be in this uh code. only uh zoning district laws or rules regarding the use of land and districts. I'm sorry if you could go back. Yeah, sorry about that. So, the structure of this is as you go through it, you're going to start and see general provisions and definitions. As you first come in, there's about 37 pages of definitions, but it's important A to Z. It's important for people to know um you know what is in this code. Um after you see general um definitions and provisions, you're going to see the zoning districts a and their uses. So, the zoning districts within here, you'll see things such as um I'm sorry, residential, business, manufacturing, destination, mixed use, commercial overlay, um environmental, solar, and wind um energy overlay districts. The residential districts are going down from 7 to five. The business is going down from 5 to four. Uh within those uh districts, you're going to see the uses of each of those districts. Um you also then see developmental standards. The developmental standards are going to have construction standards, agreements, the signage, safety provisions, design. This is another area that is um quite large. Um the two largest areas are going to be the districts and their uses

and then these developmental standards. Then there is the special and overlay districts. Again I mentioned the commercial overlay environmental solar and wind energy overlay. And then lastly as you go through it you'll see administration and enforcement. This is important because that ensures that people conform with this ordinance and it helps the city to manage blight and regulate the land use. It is uh the duty of the plan commission and director to enforce all of the ordinances and receive applications required by the ordinance issue uh permits and furnish certificates. So the uh administration and enforcement is vital to ensuring that the ordinance takes uh effect. Um and then the legal nonconforming use. Uh Dr. Sylvia is going to go into uh uh more particularities of that, but a legal non-conforming use is a property or building that was lawful when it was established but does not meet the current zoning rules due to a change in the law. A lot of times we get legal non-conforming use, I did myself, mixed with a variance. Um the variance is something that a person has to come forward and request from the zoning board. The legal non-conforming use is that when this goes into effect, you might have some properties that are in a particular area, it's legal um for them to be there, but they're not really conforming with that district. Um, nevertheless, we call it legal nonconforming use. So, they didn't come forth and get a variance or ask for a change to be made, but they fell into that definition. Um so they are in a sense if they make any future changes they have to come forward and ask for if they make any changes to the building or

property um for a variance but they are grandfathered in. Um their use is often grandfathered in when the zoning codes are updated meaning they can continue under the the rules certain rules but they can't expand or restart um anything. And if they do, then that's when a variance comes in when they have to ask for a variance. So that is my part and piece. I'm going to now turn it um over to I believe

Mr. Sharp. Okay. So this this was the hardest part putting this on, right? Feel like we've got a mountain of chairs here.

Good afternoon everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Corey Sharp and I serve as your director for the planning department. And um a huge thank you for the team that is presenting before you in addition to uh Commissioner Hall. Um we spent a lot of hours pulling this code together and uh when Salona mentioned that we have 37 pages of definitions. She's not lying. And um we literally went through every single one of them and evaluated whether it was relevant, if it was something that we needed to to tackle. I am going to cover our various districts and uh the development standards that are going to be included into the code. Our code today as uh Mr. Gaines mentioned is cumbersome to understand because it's stacking. uh our seven different residential districts starts at district 1 and then district 7 says everything that's included in one through six is included here plus this. It's very hard to understand. So we actually took on a new format for our code and each of these districts and once our projector gets up and going

Yeah. um will be able to show you that we went to a table format. So instead of a lot of words on the paper, now we have a very clear, concise table format for each of our districts. In addition, we have a table format for our permitted uses. Right now, you have to read through all seven districts of the residential code to figure out what is allowed in zone 7 for residential. So, you'll be able to see um art galleries are allowed in, you know, five or six different districts very easily. And this too was uh our team went through these line by line as well. And I believe this is I mean this is 11 by 17 paper. It's five pages long, so there's a lot of uses. And believe it or not, it's consolidated from from what we had in our previous plan. So, uh, as we started building our districts, we have what we what we had, which was written in 1990, and, uh, that we've been using, uh, this code for now 30 years. Um, Mr. Gains, I don't even think is 30 years old. So, there you have it. We have seven districts in residential, five districts in business, three districts in manufacturing, and then there's a flood plane ordinance and a separate airport ordinance today. Moving forward, um we took the framework that is in our comprehensive plan that is at city council right now and really built a series of districts that meets our our needs today. So, can you flip the slide for me? These districts include what we already

had, but we've expanded it to also include entertainment. This would be uh movie theaters, um golf courses, destination districts. This is a new concept uh for Gary and quite frankly it might be a new concept a very innovative concept because it allows us to be the most flexible with our land use. We have an anchor institution like city hall. It is a destination. All the land uses around that in that specific area needs to support that anchor institution. So for instance I is an anchor institution. we then will have a flexible use around IU in order to uh continue to elevate IUN's growth. So, h student housing, retail, Starbucks, things like that can automatically come in without going through uh barriers in our code. So, we tried to set this up to be flexible. Um we have a PUB district which is planned unit development district now which is um much more fruitful from the standpoint of development standards. We have a new railroad district uh there currently we had someone actually come in the office maybe six months ago and asked to put a sign up in the railroad area but we actually don't have a zone for railroad and it's not right of way. it is private railroad property. So creating a whole new zone for railroad and then as Salona mentioned we're incorporating all of these other districts that weren't in here before. So we're incorporating the airport district and then of course mixeduse districts which I will get into um detail. So um the next slide please.

Each of our districts as I mentioned is formatted in a table format. I recognize you will not be able to see these, but I'm going to walk through each of the different zones indiv individually and highlight just a few things. We could literally spend five hours presenting to you all the new concepts that are here, but I promised I would only speak for 30 minutes and uh we'll get you out of here quickly. So, our residential districts um we oftentimes we get calls from um citizens that say my on the county it says that I'm zoned for this because that's how you pay your taxes. County tax structure might say it's a commercial building, but really it's zoned residential. So we tried to as much as possible align our nomenclature to the county's taxing nomenclature. The county organizes the residential districts as a single family two to three single family attached four four to 19 apartment units and then um 20 plus apartment units. So we have five different residential structures. Um, we have two single family. One is for small lot and one is for large lot. And the reason why we created a small lot is because one, we don't have that today in our code. And two, that's what most of Gary is. Most of Gary is 25 to 35 foot lots. And this small lot R1, that's what this will permit automatically is a lot can be built on uh that is 25 foot in width or as previously platted. That's how that works. Um a another couple additions that we made to this uh

residential code is we added height struct height limitations. Um so 30 ft for single family uh 36 for um attached units and 50 ft for apartments. And then we also added the capability in our single family and our duplex zones R1 through R3 the capability to have accessory dwelling units. Accessory dwelling units is something that came out in our comprehensive plan. We had a section in our comprehensive plan that talked about I'll pull it up here uh the missing middle and missing middle housing is all about providing a diversity of your housing stock and right now our code only allows for single family houses basically. So, we are adding a diversity of districts. Uh, and we're also allowing for these accessory dwelling units. For instance, we had someone come in that wanted to have um an um a smaller housing unit or a carriage house above a garage, a unit above a garage for their daughter. And this code will allow that to happen. Okay. So if if we had interested individuals in doing that, we now allow accessory dwellings. The other thing that we added in um our code that is specifically mentioned in our residential districts is farm animal standards. Chickens are popular, goats are popular, geese are popular. We now added an entire uh regulation around farm animal standards which speaks to bees a which is called apiary

uh and then these other stands. How many dogs can you have without it being a kennel basically? Uh and that's just to help um al align and strengthen our nuisance ordinance so that when we do get complaints we can go to a couple different places and determine what is a nuisance and what is permitted. our business districts. Uh we have scaled back this uh to basically have three traditional business districts. One is uh limited retail business uh think a coffee shop or a McDonald's small restaurant style businesses B1. B2 is your large multi-tenant retails. Think Village Center that would be large retail. Then we have our traditional district which you used to be before which is wholesale and distribution. This is where we have a larger building but they're more businessoriented. They're more retail facing rather than wholesale facing and and pushing uh trucks in and out. It's more of a a smaller footprint. The new district for business um really comes out of months worth of conversations as we have been doing code enforcement and it it gets around an um automobiles. We've created an entirely new automotive district and so any use associated with automotive now will be um follow the standards put forth in B4. So if you had a car wash, it's B4. a car um a a fueling station B4. Uh if you had a um car sales lot, it's B4. And by able to isolating the automobile uses were able to put stringent development

standards on there. For instance, we in the B4 district for their off- streetet parking requirements, we break down their parking requirements um not only in how many cars can they let's say an auto sales, right? They want to pack that as many cars as possible onto one little lot. This tells them they can have one space per 320 square ft of asphalt. meaning, you know, it's a standard parking size lot space and there's space to walk around it. There's not a 100 cars in a very small area. And then the other thing that we've done is required a minimum number of parking uh based on the building size. So, if it were a gas station, you have to have one space per 200 square ft. If it's a dealer, it's one um employee space uh per 15 vehicles that are for sale and one customer space per 15 vehicles for sale. So, we're starting to create those standards to say, "All right, we want to create a beautiful Gary, not only just a successful Gary. We're not going to have these clustered lots that look like junkyards." Our manufacturing districts are broken up into the traditional three levels. Uh M1 continues to say limited manufacturing. M2 manufacturing and production. And then M3 is heavy industrial. That's US steel. So um I'm not going to go into too much on manufacturing because I think we all understand that a new district is entertainment. Um the idea around our new entertainment district is to promote a destinationoriented um with high concentration of music venues, theaters, festivals. Um something that's unique that that taps

into our tourism draw. Then we have these new districts as I've mentioned destination and mixed use. I've explained destination I um from a high level as we get into the actual nuances of the code. There's actually four different districts with the destination classification. The first one is destination park. So it's a city park and um that's the anchor. Everything around that needs to support the city park. There's destination school which formerly was an institution um designation. Now we've just placed it in um destination school, destination uh civic which is city hall or um like the county courthouse and then destination institution which would be a university or hospital. The destination districts are meant to be uh mixeduse districts and um with a as with a connection a rope tied around that anchor institution so to speak. in our anchor institution districts, our destinations, and our mixed use. We have design standards that go into them uh to make sure that we have pedestrian connectivity, that, you know, we're not just um creating these districts, and we want a walkable, diverse, mixed use. We want to make sure there's internal uh connect pedestrian connectivity, but that they're also connecting those to the external network as well. Our mixeduse districts, we have two of them. One is our downtown mixeduse district which basically aligns with our uh transit development district in in the downtown area. And then we have a classification for neighborhood mixed use. The primary difference between

these two mixed uses is the density. So downtown high density taller buildings. neighborhood mixed use uh would be um you know the the corner node with multi u multiple built um multi-tenant building that maybe is only two or three stories tall not as not as tall so um you may remember in this past uh year uh that notreame uh came in and produced a a downtown vision and action plan. We have incorporated uh their graphics into our zoning ordinance just to continue to um strengthen the design integrity that we want in our downtown. So we have massing and building orientations um and then density on how we want um these buildings to look from an architectural facade and where they are placed on the site. So, um, as I mentioned, this is a draft document and we are punching this out early. And you can see that I already have changes that I'm working on based on conversations that I've had. And I can tell you that one of the things that we're ch we're adding is um as you're going through it, you'll see that there's some um formatting that we've got to fix, but also some accreditations, right? So, we want to make sure Notre Dame gets credit for the work that they're putting into our zoning code. So, we've got to add that nomenclature onto these sites as well. But to give you an example, um this is a um a page that talks about how the architectural facade should work on the site in downtown Gary. Some of the things that we are incorporating into the mixeduse

districts is um uh design standards, but also parking standards and loading birth standards. So, it's not, you know, you can't empty your semiis out on site or you can't empty your coffee truck out on the front area. You have to be able to incorporate that in. And we're taking it a step further and putting parking uh parking for bicycle standards in it because we're strengthening our trail network and so we want to make sure that people have a place to park their bikes when they live and work in the same same building. Okay. So, um we've also got some new districts that um Dr. Martin is going to cover and they deal with sustainability. But um the other items that I wanted to touch on come down to these other regulations that are associated with our our development standards. I had to get back to that section. So this is all sustainability. Um so our development standards are focused around um these core ideas. um the accessory use and building right now um our definition around accessory use and those buildings is loose and so we're tightening that up. We're telling you how big an accessory building can be and we're telling you where it can be located on the site and how many you can have on the site. So you can't have five sheds on your site. You can have, you know, two. Um we're tackling a development plan. This is new for Gary. Uh this is a standard where all projects that are specified in our use matrix as you know on our on our on our matrix in each of the codes. We tell them whether they have to go through a development plan review. meaning they have to submit

their construction plans uh in order to move on to permitting so that we can make sure that the design that they've presented meets our zoning code in detail. Right now that is happening at the permitting stage which is oftentimes too late because everybody has already spent so much money putting architectural plans together. We want to touch them early so that they're spending less money and less time in the permitting stage. We have a huge section on signs. Our sign ordinance today is um ex extremely complicated to understand and um it's loose. Any type of sign is basically allowed and you can have huge signs on small buildings. So we have really tightened that up. I will tell you that um through throughout this code we used um several different communities as baselines. You know, a planners are writing code all the time. My peers in the industry, you know, are pushing um some of their codes up against the Indiana Supreme Court. So, uh the Indianapolis uh community had one their sign ordinance pushed up against the Supreme Court. And so we took their code and evaluated what's right for Gary in in that scenario knowing that that um was recently updated based on findings from their Supreme Court case. We also looked at code from Chicago. Uh we we looked at um code from central Indiana and the American Planning Association uh produces best best practices in our code. So, we're trying to incorporate signs, landscaping, fencing, lighting, telecommunication. Those are things that are best practice that our code does not currently address. So, we do not have a landscape ordinance. So, as we think about greater

Gary, we want it to be beautiful. We're going to have landscape standards for all of our new development. And then, um, I mentioned the animal standards. And then we have standards, uh, for sexually oriented businesses. This is um well I don't need to explain what it is. We'll create standards of where they can go and how they can operate. And then as Salona mentioned this is a unified development ordinance. We have a sub subdivision control ordinance. This is where platting. We've had a couple instances where we're subdividing or um adding properties together to create something new. I would imagine that as we um start to um start this wave of development, we'll see a lot of plats come through. This has a formal plat process that is based on state statute. It actually um has a signature body from our our city engineer. So, um it creates these these opportunities for us to have standards of how does new development happen and how do we align this code with our technical standards. This code is not our technical standards. Our engineer, our sustainability office, they have the technical standards. The subdivision control ordinance says everybody needs to look at those technical standards. And when you bring your plat before us, it needs to have those technical standards incorporated into the plat. So, I have uh Wow, that's not even you.

I thought it was our That was not I we have blown through this information and I know it's a lot to take in, but I'm going to turn it turn it over to you Dr. Martin and um we'll continue the conversation. Well, good afternoon everyone. Um I am No, this is for the audio online. Yeah, it's not for us. It's for you. Makes sense. It's gonna be loud on the audio. I do apologize.

What phone are you referring to? Is that okay?

Okay. Good afternoon everybody. Well, evening, right, everyone. So, I am Dr. Sylvia Martin and I'm actually up here to present on a topic that I love. um to death because I am an environmental planner, right? So the one thing we want to do is make sure as we grow and we develop, we maintain and sustain what already exists. So in doing so we have as a team come up with environmental overlay districts. So that is solar, wind energy, whale head protection and flood plane. Now the purpose of the solar um overlay is no you can keep it here. I'm sorry. Is to guide the res to guide the responsible development of solar energy systems while ensuring compatibility with surrounding land use, protecting the environment and pro and maintaining public health safety and general welfare. As we all know, we're all looking for alternative ways to heat and light our homes and things of that nature. So, in this district, there are two key um entities. You have commercial solar and residential solar. They are not the same thing and they do not follow the same standards at all. So, for your commercial solar, that is solar that acquires a um income or you you can profit off that. solar. So that is larger businesses utilizing that solar to um house neighborhoods I mean to excuse me to light neighborhoods or provide that um resource to different places that makes it commercial. So then you have residential solar. This

is the moms and dads who want to have a solar on their roof to light up their own house for their own personal consumption. So if it's for your personal consumption then that makes it residential. So and they're different and separated in our code. So there is a commercial overlay for solar and there is a residential overlay for solar. We also have our um wind energy overlay. The purpose of this district is to give those types of sustainable resources to individuals that want to utilize them, but we also want to make sure that we do not impact the other peoples around them. So they are also regulated in a certain way to help improve the sustainability of our community but not over um complicate the your neighbors and your relationship with people around you by trying to use those resources. Um we have our wellhead protection district. This district is very significant because it protects our drinking water. Right? So, some of you may not know there are actually wellheads right around here that that's a picture of an actual picture, right? But we don't know these type of things and we build and we develop around them and then we impact our groundwater with all of the um chemicals from from runoff. Um the if we build them around farms then we have that going into our drinking water that is important to protect. We all understand the significance of how water helps us and how it grows and sustain life. So that district is very in very

very important for this new code and it is regulated as well in order to protect you all and our future. Next, we have our flood plane overlay district. As we know, we have flood plane as a zone historically, right? So, it's just a a zoning area and it doesn't have any regulations and then when people purchase those locations and they have higher insuranceances and they have all of this that impact them, they don't understand the the difference. They don't get that from the person that's selling. But if you identify that you're in this overlay, it gives you a broader understanding of, okay, so this whole area is flood plane. Now I'm going to go back to my realtor. I'm going to ask them why is this a flood plane? What does that mean for me and if I buy this property? It's giving that knowledge to the public so that you can make better decisions, but it's giving that knowledge to the city to know what areas to protect and um the different habitats that can grow in there. You know, there's natural life sources that helps plants grow, that helps that cleans our water, the natural infil infiltration system that impacts us all in small and large ways. So, it's important for us to have this district to protect our livelihood and that of nature. You can go to the next one. I would like to now turn it over to Attorney Marco. Mike.

Oh, my turn again. I'm stealing. Here you are. Thank you, ma'am. How does this go?

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Marco Molina, city attorney. Um, if you recall back in January, I gave you a dazzling presentation about the role play between BCA and Plan Commission. I know it was good cuz Mr. Miller stood awake the whole time. Um, so it's kind of an update like we we did uh, you know, through Corey's direction rewriting the entire zoning code. Um, I'm just going to give you a quick overview. But one thing before I jump into that, one thing I really like in our code now or the new uh zoning code that we put together is it really tracks state law. Before it had the same stuff in there, but it wasn't clear. So that if someone off the street was just looking at our zoning code as we have it in our ordinance, they're not going to track where in the state law it is. and they'd have to open up the zoning code and then the state law and read them together to see how they interplay. Um, obviously state law directs what we can do, but now the way that the zoning code is drafted, it it already has that in there. So, you can go to one place and you'll be advised of what's going on in state law, what provisions in state law um this is uh pariting um at our level. So, um, plan commission is is kind of charged with more larger grand scheme of thing, uh, view. Um, as you can see, you have review and recommend zoning map changes. U, you approve subdivision plat. Uh, you oversee the comprehensive plan, which we just went through that process. Um, you do the review and recommend uh, ordinance updates. And that's why we're here today. That's why we're starting this process, right? because even though it's a zoning code, the plan commission has to approve any changes to the zoning code. Um, quick side note. So, we're doing this kind of to give you an overview of what we're looking at, what we put together, uh, what we see as being the final uh, zoning ordinance. Uh but this is just to

give you the overview and you can now go look at what we've done and then we have to hold a private I mean sorry a public a public hearing which we can do at the next meeting uh to allow input from the public. We'll put it out uh but that's sort of the process that we'll follow uh and what we must follow in order to to finalize the changes uh to the zoning code. Uh finally uh the plan commission approves development plans for certain districts or overlays. Um, when we get to the BCA, it's more of a it's a quasi judicial uh branch. You don't have the overview, but you're you're charged with really interpreting the zoning code uh to hear and decide on variance request um whether it's developmental design standards, which is if you recall from again that dazzling presentation, uh you make the final call here. So, if you make a developmental uh variance, you say yes or no, that's what happens. Uh you also deal with special use permits. Um, but that's uh a recommendation. We hear that here and then we make a recommendation to city council and ultimately they make the final determination of whether we give a positive recommendation or a negative recommendation, it still goes to city council. Uh, and then you interpret the zoning code. Whenever there's an ambiguity, um, if, uh, Sylvia or Corey make a determination, uh, and somebody doesn't believe that that's correct, they come to the board of zoning appeals and we would hear that and make the determination as to whether we believe or whether you believe, uh, the interpretation was correct under the zoning code as we have. And that's hearing appeals from decisions made by zoning officials. Um, so that's kind of a brief overview. I don't think we're taking questions right now, but after if you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you. And who did they go back to? So, I'm up here again to talk to you about what's to come and the next steps. So, as we move forward, we have to bring certain things into alignment with this um zoning code. As you all know, it is brand new, which means the land use itself doesn't align with what we have on paper. So, we must have a citywide reszone. um we've come up with a strategy and that's basically what we're doing now. The city reszone strategy represents a comprehensive equitydriven update to modernize Gary's zoning framework and aligns land use policies with current development and goals. So that is us aligning our comprehensive plan with our zoning ordinance with all our regulations and making sure that development moving forward all reflects on that. And then basically it helps us all stand on the same page. And if we all are aligned then we have less legal non-conformings. We have less zoning variances. When you notice that there is a uptick in variances which we have that means that your zoning code isn't working. Right? So we've identified that historically and so that took us here to the update of the zoning code. In doing so, we noticed a few things. Our zoning don't match what we all say, right? It don't match what the code say. The code's written and development still took place. Development is not going to stop. But the code stopped at 1990 before Michael was born. Um, so

therefore, if it if the cold stop and development keeps going, you will always have that battle with your community. And it's important for us all to have a cohesion when we're developing because this is we live here together. We got to work here. We got to live here to work here, right? So we live here and we work here. So we also noticed one big thing that our address addressing system is non-existent. So we have decided that we want to make sure that the address management system that we're creating is to introduce a centralized GIS datadriven approach to managing all addresses address data across city departments. Pretty much it will align this same map is this same map. So this same zone matches with this same zone. So when I'm updating a area for uh reszone, they should follow. They should follow. I I should be able to look at one and see the other. So and we're currently in the process of well the address management system is created. This is it. As you can see, you see all the little dots. That's that's your houses. Maybe this one mine. No, that's a parking lot. But but so if I combine these parcels and in doing so what has been happening is now I am 1217- 39 that's important for us to correct that parcel has been combined it's one parcel shouldn't I still have several parcel numbers several different addresses and next to me shouldn't be uh 73 13, right? Because it was just 17. Now it's shifting to just seven, you know? So, we have those misalignments and and that's

because of the combination. We don't know. We don't know how to handle it because our code once again 1990, we're in 2025 development is completely different and the combination of parcels and subdividing. All of these are different type of nuances that those who wrote that couldn't have projected to come to this fullest capacity. So in doing so we now have the capability of creating this address management system which county will then adopt for themselves. Lucky for us because they don't want to do it. So we're going to take our address management system, give it to them and it will be live. So the same thing you go when you go do your variances the same system that they use will be the same system that we use and your address with your petition will match your address with your plot will match. There is an application process that will take place because you have to inform when you're combining because your address changed. You can't come up with your address. We will help that process so that we keep everything in alignment. So other than that, those are the biggest things. We will have a new updated map and um this these systems will be live soon. So just look forward to those new additions from the city. Um I will turn it over to Michael as he will give you the closing and our timeline and things of that nature.

Oh, here I'mma fill it. Watch. I'm going go home with it. [Applause] Okay, so some of you may ask, what does this mean for Gary? This update mean for Gary. Now that regulations will have more clarity that will ensure faster approval or will ensure fast faster approvals. The districts will be tailored to meet real community needs. There will be stronger protections of neighborhood character and integrity. and it will it will support modern infrastructure and business and position the city of Gary for smart equitable and smart grow growth. With this update, we've created a zoning ordin ordinance that's both visionary and practical in giving us the tools required to build this the Gary we all believe in. Um I would like to reiterate our gratitude for your commitment to a greater Gary. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback on the zoning ordinance, feel free to reach us at zoninggary.gov. Although this this is only the beginning of our public collaboration and conversation, we're excited for the future of this transformative work. Additionally, this presentation will be showcased at our BZA meeting on November 13th uh with no public hearing and at our next plan commission meeting on November 20th with a public hearing. Furthermore, over the next 30 days, you can visit the v the zoning landing page to download and review the draft code alongside any future updates. Uh, I would like to give a special thanks to our planning staff, consultants, and community stakeholders. And thank you for coming. [Applause]