Subject
title
Continuation of the Work Session on the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite (ZOR) Project, Focusing on Development Review Process Improvements (FAST 2).
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Discussion
This work session is a continuation of the first of six proposed Planning Commission work sessions for the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite. Each work session will follow a Mayor and Council work session on the same topics. The purpose of each Planning Commission work session will be to present the topics, provide information on Mayor and Council’s direction and receive feedback. Between now and September, specific ordinance text will not be provided. Instead, staff will present recommendations on proposed regulations, receive direction and then draft the various articles of the new zoning ordinance. By September, the Mayor and Council and the Commission will have reviewed and discussed the most significant zoning map and ordinance recommendations so that the draft regulations will reflect the direction previously provided to staff. This approach should be more efficient and should make the adoption process smoother.
Need for a More Streamlined Process
The nation, state, region, and the city are in a housing crisis. Over the last six years, the city has produced 77% of its housing goals as established for the region by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. To meet our target, 8,600 units must be built in the city by 2040. The good news is that the city produced 118% of its goal in 2024 and has approximately 6,000 units in the pipeline.
Current factors such as higher-than-normal interest rates and the high cost of construction materials impact decisions on whether to move forward with projects even though the housing demand is high. However, the city can take actions that could activate residential projects sooner, which are included in the staff’s recommendations below.
Staff recommends that the Planning Commission support future ZOR changes to create more efficient, predictable processes which will be important for economic development, job creation, and the construction of new housing. Staff agrees that our processes are much longer than they should be and should be changed to create efficiency, effectiveness, and remove some of the risk of developing in Rockville. Staff believes, which has also been claimed by developers, that the time and expense of a discretionary approval process can be prohibitive to development.
Where staff recommends administrative site plan approval, the entitlement to construct the needed housing and non-residential uses has already been granted when the City rezoned the property consistently with the city’s vision as shown in the adopted Comprehensive Plan. Any change in the entitlement must go through a discretionary process and would not be approved by staff. For example, the Rockshire development needed the PD Amendment for residential use because it was only entitled under the Planned Development for commercial use on the Village Center property. In addition, Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) staff strongly supports these recommendations to meet Mayor and Council’s approved housing strategies.
The Comprehensive Plan was adopted in August 2021 after extensive public engagement identified and confirmed the location, type, and intensity of new growth and development in Rockville. We are currently undergoing the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite (ZOR) that will establish and confirm the regulations that all new development must meet prior to projects being constructed. Now is the time to recommend any new standards for development (e.g. improved public use space) that must be complied with at the time of site plan review.
With new standards adopted, staff will be capable of performing the technical review of development plans and will approve them only after all city requirements are met. There is no discretion; the application either meets the requirements and is approved, or it does not and is not approved (see graphic below).
Responses to Requests from Previous Work Session
At the work session on April 23 <https://rockvillemd.granicus.com/player/clip/5050?redirect=true>, the Planning Commission considered four recommendations regarding the development process. These recommendations proposed streamlining processes, removing duplicative steps, and allowing additional administrative approvals.
The Commission supported the first two recommendations, which outlined streamlined processes for project plans and Planned Development (PD) amendments. The Commission posed questions and requested additional information on two other recommendations that proposed additional administrative approvals for certain site plans. These are summarized below along with staff’s responses.
1. Could residential in other adjoining jurisdictions be included in the buffer area in Recommendation 3?
o Staff Response: Yes, staff will ensure that the ZOR adoption includes provisions for including residential zones in jurisdictions that adjoin the city.
2. More specifics on Recommendation 3 - 50% of site, redevelopment, etc.
o Staff Response: Following the Mayor and Council work session, staff added the following to Recommendation 3, “To ensure that projects have limited impacts to nearby property, there could be limitations on projects eligible for administrative approval such as additions, expansions, or redevelopments of up to 50% of the site and/or redevelopments of a certain size or square footage.” Staff has further analyzed this provision while drafting this section of the ZOR and now believes it to be unnecessary and is removing it from the recommendation. Changes to less than 50% of a site are treated as amendments to existing applications, not new applications, so this section would not apply to them.
Moreover, this provision is not needed because these zones are the most intense and are where plans call for development, and infrastructure is in place. The 300’ distance requirement ensures separation and avoids compatibility issues with residential. As detailed in the “Site Plan Analysis” section below, historic cases that would have been eligible for this provision demonstrate this. If there are concerns with this recommendation, staff suggests increasing the size of the buffer instead of incorporating the other options presented on April 23.
3. What determines a Level 1 or a Level 2? Is there an opportunity to improve?
o Staff Response: The Zoning Ordinance currently bases the level of review on a point system <https://library.municode.com/md/rockville/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CICO_CH25ZOOR_ART7PRSIPLPRPLSPEXOTPE_S25.07.02APPRSIPLPRPLSPEX>. Each application is evaluated on the acreage of the site, the number of dwelling units proposed, the square footage of non-residential space proposed, the residential impact area, and the traffic impact of the proposed development. Each of these items is allocated a number of points which are added together to determine the complete point valuation for the project. Up to 6 points is a Level 1 site plan, Level 2 is 7-15 points, and 16 or more points is a project plan. In preparing the response to this question, staff has identified and prepared an additional Recommendation 5 below.
4. What are the estimated time savings?
o Staff Response: Staff conservatively estimates that Recommendations 1 and 2 would reduce the required time to approval by seven weeks and Recommendations 3 and 4 by three to six weeks. The savings could be greater. As noted in the next bullet below, the difference between administrative site plans and Level 2 is 3 months.
5. Preliminary benchmarking - how do Rockville’s processing times compare to other nearby jurisdictions?
o Staff Response: Staff evaluated processing times for site plans and compared them to similar processes in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, and Frederick City.
§ Rockville: Staff evaluated the time between application submittal and final action for cases from 2014 to 2024. Level 2 site plans took nearly 7 months on average. Administrative site plans (amendments and Level 1s) took under 4 months.
§ The City of Frederick provides two calendars with application and review timeframes. For simpler projects, the time from application to Planning Commission action ranges from approximately 4-6 months. For more complex projects, it ranges from 6-8 months.
§ Montgomery County: Montgomery County’s Ordinance sets specific review times for each application type, as follows:
• Sketch Plans (including major and minor amendments): 90 days
• Preliminary Plans: 120 days
• Site Plans (including major and minor amendments): 120 days
• Project Plan Amendment: 120 days
An applicant may request extensions to allow additional time to meet all necessary code requirements and standards. Aside from an allowable 30-day Director-level extension, there is no limit to the length of each extension or the number of extensions granted by the Planning Board, as long as the applicant continues good faith efforts to address requirements.
Staff has not yet found metrics on the total time from application to final action for these cases. However, a review of recent Planning Board agendas and discussion with Montgomery County staff indicate that one or more extensions are more common than final action within the codified timeframes.
§ Gaithersburg: Similar to Rockville’s, the City of Gaithersburg’s ordinance does not prescribe a time in which their site plan applications must be approved. Their staff estimate that their Sketch Plans and Schematic Development Plans take approximately six (6) months, site plan applications take approximately three (3) to four (4) months, and their site plan amendments take approximately one (1) month when approved by staff and two (2) months when approved by their Planning Commission. Note that these are estimates based on staff’s experience and not based on actual project data.
In addition, after further evaluating and developing draft code language related to the recommendations, staff has made a revision to Recommendation 2 related to Planned Development amendments. The section below describes the most current staff recommendations for the Planning Commission’s consideration.
Recommendations for Development Process Improvements
1. Streamline the Project Plan process to be achievable within six months, as follows:
• Mayor and Council continue to be the deciding body, making findings on Adequate Public Facilities (APF), consistency with the comprehensive plan, and the proposed uses and intensity of the development, following a recommendation from the Planning Commission.
• Combine the preapplication area meeting and the post-application area meeting into a single post-application meeting, consistent with the Mayor and Council direction at the September 30 work session.
• Remove the mandatory briefings for the Planning Commission and Mayor and Council. There are a variety of other means for these bodies to learn about the proposed development. Plans are posted on the city’s website, applicants are required to notify the Mayor and Council electronically, and city staff is available to answer any questions about proposed projects. Reducing the number of public meetings is also consistent with the State’s goals of limiting the number of public meetings required for priority development projects as stated in the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act.
• Allow site plans that follow project plans to be approved administratively. Currently, these site plans are approved by the Planning Commission even when they are subsequent to a project plan. Because the Mayor and Council have already made the more discretionary findings on the project at the project plan stage, including consistency with the Comprehensive Plan (considering and informed by a recommendation from the Planning Commission), staff can confirm that the site plans are consistent with the project plan and comply with all aspects of the Zoning Ordinance and other city requirements such as transportation, utilities, stormwater, fire access, and forestry. These site plans can be processed concurrently with the project plan, so long as the project plan is approved first.
Project Plans are the largest, most complex projects such as Twinbrook Quarter and Shady Grove. For a comparison of the current process and these proposed changes, see Attachment 1 - Current and Proposed Process Diagrams. Staff estimates that these changes would result in a reduction of approximately seven weeks in the minimum time required to complete the project plan and associated site plan process. This change would also result in significant time savings for staff. The project plan portion of the process would be achievable in six months provided that applicants are able to address comments and provide timely resubmittals.
Mayor and Council March 3 Direction - Supported staff’s recommendations listed above.
Planning Commission April 23 Feedback - Supported staff’s recommendations listed above.
2. Streamline the Planned Development (PD) amendment process to be achievable within 6 months.*
Throughout the City, there are a variety of Planned Development (PD) zones with special provisions for development standards and uses. Development or redevelopment within these zones requires a PD amendment, which the Zoning Ordinance currently requires to follow the same process as the project plan. At the April 23rd work session, staff proposed a new separate process for PD amendments. After working on drafting the proposed changes, staff is proposing one change to this new process, which affects the role of the Planning Commission. Staff previously recommended that PD amendments proceed to Mayor and Council without a Planning Commission recommendation while subsequent site plans would be subject to Planning Commission approval. Staff now proposes that PD amendments follow the revised project plan process, in which Planning Commission makes a recommendation to Mayor and Council and subsequent site plans are subject to Chief of Zoning approval. Advantages to this include:
a. Providing the Commission the opportunity to make a recommendation to M&C that they can consider in deciding the case;
b. Subsequent site plans, which implement the approved plans, can be more quickly reviewed and approved by staff as described in Recommendation 1 for project plans. Because the Planning Commission and Mayor and Council have approved the PD amendment, review of the site plans is a technical exercise ensuring compliance with codes and requirements along with the PD.
c. One consistent process avoids confusion for all involved in the process, including Mayor and Council, the Planning Commission, applicants, staff, and the public.
For a comparison of the current process and these proposed changes, see Attachment 1 - Current and Proposed Process Diagrams. This amended recommendation results in the same time savings from the existing process as the previous recommendation. Staff estimates that these changes would reduce the minimum time required to complete the PD amendment process by approximately five weeks.
Mayor and Council March 3 Direction - Supported staff’s recommendations as previously presented.
Planning Commission April 23 Feedback - Supported staff’s recommendations as previously presented.
*Updated after April 23rd work session.
3. Designate certain mixed-use district developments for administrative site plan approval.
A review of site plans for new development processed over the last five years found that of the 20 applications filed, only one met the criteria to be processed administratively. The other 19 required Planning Commission approval. There is an opportunity to identify additional types of developments that staff recommends being approved administratively. Specifically, the following is recommended for an administrative process:
• Redevelopments in the most intense Mixed-Use zones (MXB, MXCT, MXE, MXCD, and MXTD) when not within 300 feet of a residential zone (see Attachment 2 - Mixed Use Zones Residential Buffer Map)
This recommendation is similar to Montgomery County’s process. Within Montgomery County's mixed-use zones, new development proposals that are within height and area thresholds and not adjacent to certain zones can be approved administratively. However, many developers in Montgomery County go through a process called the “optional method” which significantly increases the density and must go through the County Planning Board for approval.
Mayor and Council March 3 Direction - Not yet comfortable with staff’s recommendations.
Planning Commission April 23 Feedback - Requested additional information and questions.
4. Designate additional project types for administrative site plan approval.
Staff recommends the types of development listed below that align with current City plans, policies, and priorities be approved administratively.
a. Nonresidential to residential conversions of existing buildings. These require little to no site changes, meet the city’s sustainability objectives by recycling buildings, and bring about new housing units sooner than new developments.
b. Research and development (including life sciences) in the MXE zone (see Attachment 3 - MXE Zone Map). Staff believes this action could make us more attractive than other jurisdictions to attract new headquarters and other employment opportunities. This also aligns with the City’s economic development goals and REDI’s FY 25 Strategic Plan priority effort, “Assist the City in marketing the Faster, Accountable, Smarter, Transparent (FAST) permitting program and other initiatives for businesses and with the Zoning Code re-write to streamline opening and operating bio/life science businesses and reduce barriers to coming to Rockville. This includes more ‘by right’ uses.” In addition, the city can promote sites within Rockville that are ‘Bio-Ready’ which means biotech laboratory and manufacturing uses are by right.
c. Housing developments with 20% or greater affordable housing units. City code currently requires 15% of residential units in a development to be Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs). Some housing developments, especially if funded by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), may exceed this, and the administrative process can make a significant difference in making the project work financially.
d. Housing for senior adults and persons with disabilities. This would reduce barriers to the development of supportive housing types for vulnerable populations.
e. Residential development up to 19 units. These projects are below the City’s threshold for providing Moderately-Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs). This would allow small projects to proceed faster, which is critical for challenging smaller residential projects.
For a comparison of the current process and these proposed changes, see Attachment 1 - Current and Proposed Process Diagrams. For both Recommendations 3 and 4, notification and an area meeting would be required as they are now for Level 1 site plans, and staff proposes to add a provision that administrative decisions be publicly posted. Staff is committed to a transparent process in which everyone’s voice is heard.
Because the processes remain similar, time savings for this change would result from establishing an available Planning Commission agenda, drafting staff reports and presentations, and sending notices, which amounts to a minimum of three to six weeks, along with the other advantages to administrative approvals referenced in the “National Strategies to Address the Housing Crisis” section in the April 23rd report.
Mayor and Council March 3 Direction - Not yet comfortable with staff’s recommendations.
Planning Commission April 23 Feedback - Requested additional information and questions.
5. Update the Point System to be more transparent.
The Zoning Ordinance currently bases the level of review on a point system. Each application is evaluated on the acreage of the site, the number of dwelling units proposed, the square footage of non-residential space, the residential impact area, and the traffic impact of development proposed. Each of these items is allocated a number of points which are added together to determine the complete point valuation for the project. Up to 6 points is a Level 1 site plan, Level 2 is 7-15 points, and 16 or more points is a project plan. Level 1 site plans are subject to Chief of Zoning approval, Level 2 site plans are subject to Planning Commission approval, and project plans are subject to Mayor and Council approval.
In preparing the FAST 2 recommendations, staff reviewed the cases for which the point system has determined the level of review from 2014-2024 and made the following observations:
a. The point system is effective at identifying large projects that should be subject to project plan. Twinbrook Quarter and Shady Grove Innovation District are large, multiphase mixed-use projects, and they were classified as project plans under the point system.
b. Very few projects qualify for Level 1. Over the ten-year period, only two projects were below the threshold.
c. It is difficult to predict the impact of changes to the table. Staff considered modifying some of the criteria to potentially allow for more Level 1 site plans, but while increasing the area of retail or number of units could accomplish this, it is not possible to predict which projects in which locations would be impacted. Instead, staff developed more predictable and transparent alternatives in recommendations 3 and 4, which maintain the point system while specifying certain projects or certain locations where site plans would be processed as Level 1, even if they were classified as a Level 2 under the point system.
d. The residential area calculation is not transparent because it requires a complex analysis to determine the point total. Additionally, because the area is calculated based on residential within ¼ mile of the project site, a project could be assessed points for residential area impact when the residential area is relatively far from the project and therefore not impacted. As an example, the approved redevelopment at 1818 Chapman Avenue was assessed points for residential impact although, as shown in the map below, no residential properties were in close proximity of the site and only located at the perimeter of the ¼ mile buffer area.
Based on this, staff recommends keeping the point system but making a change to the Residential Area Impact section of the points table to improve transparency and more accurately reflect impacts to nearby property.
Current Residential Area Impact
|
|
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
|
Residential Area Impact |
No single unit residential development within ¼ mile |
Up to 10% of area within ¼ mile of the project area is comprised of single-unit detached residential units |
Up to 50% of area within ¼ mile of the project area is comprised of single-unit detached residential units |
Up to 75% of area within ¼ mile of the project area is comprised of single-unit detached residential units |
Development is within single-unit detached unit area. |
Proposed Residential Area Impact
|
|
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
|
Proximity to land that is zoned R-400 -> RMD-15 and developed with single-unit detached, townhouse, or multiplex dwellings |
No residential within 500’ |
Residential within 500’ |
Residential within 100’ |
Confronting residential |
Adjacent to residential |
Instead of relying on the percentage of residential land area within ¼ mile, the proposal assesses increasing point values based on proximity to residential, from 500’ to 100’ to confronting (across the street), with the highest total given for projects that are adjacent to residential. This approach ensures that projects that have residential nearby are assessed the highest point totals. It is also possible for anyone to easily calculate, increasing transparency for everyone involved in the process. Finally, the proposal broadens what is considered residential from single-unit detached to also include townhouses and multiplexes (duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes) in order to provide equity across these housing types.
In contrast to the other recommendations, this change is intended to improve administration and transparency but not significantly impact whether a project is a Level 2 or a Level 1 site plan. Although the difference in calculation could impact the point total, as described in the “Site Plan Analysis” section below, this change would not have changed the level of review of any cases over the ten-year period. All Level 2 site plans and project plans would still fall in those categories under this proposed change.
Mayor and Council March 3 Direction - this was not presented at the March 3rd work session.
Planning Commission April 23 Feedback - this was not presented at the April 23rd work session.
Additional Information
At the March 3 work session, the Mayor and Council requested two additional pieces of information:
1. Examples of other jurisdictions that have successfully implemented administrative approvals, and
2. Examples of Rockville cases that should be subject to administrative approval.
Other Jurisdiction Information
In other jurisdictions in states such as Texas and Virginia, review of site plans is entirely administrative. Because of differences in state laws, Planning Commission or Mayor and Council more commonly consider zoning changes or Planned Development overlays but more rarely review site plans.
Michigan APA created a zoning reform toolkit with expanding administrative review as a recommendation. Two case studies are cited - Kalamazoo and Albion. A survey following the release of the toolkit identified it as the top process tool .
In California, the City of Sacramento has taken steps to streamline their development review processes over the last decade. From what previously included required public hearings before the city’s Planning Commission and decision by the City Council, most development projects have been delegated to staff level or director-level hearing reviews for minor adjustments.
The City of Santa Monica has also made changes to their development process to allow for more administrative reviews in certain circumstances. In response to an adopted downtown community plan recommending housing in its downtown areas and state housing mandates, the city initiated zoning changes in 2025 to allow for residential developments in non-residential zones to be approved administratively.
Analysis of FAST Changes on Previous Cases
Based on the recommendations above staff has evaluated Level 2 site plans cases from 2014-2024 and how they would have been processed if all of the recommendations were in place, with the following results:
• The Planning Commission considered 32 Level 2 cases.
• The change to the PD amendment process results in the largest number of administrative cases (8 cases), followed by site plans following project plans and developments in intense mixed-use zones not within 300’ of commercial (7 cases each).
• Recommendation 5, related to how the residential area impact is calculated, had no impact on the level of review.
• If all the recommendations are implemented, 25 of 32 site plans would have been eligible for administrative approval. However, 15 of these site plans were implementing project plans or PD amendments. It is important to note that Planning Commission would still review and provide a recommendation to Mayor and Council on project plans and PD amendments at those earlier stages of the process.
• None of the proposed changes had in impact on which projects would be subject to the project plan process for Mayor and Council review.
• The complete list of Level 2 site plans during this period is located in Attachment 4 - Site Plans 2014-2024.
|
Site Plans 2014-2024 under FAST recommendations |
|
Total Level 2 |
32 |
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Remained Level 2 |
7 |
|
From Level 2 to Level 1 |
25 |
|
Recommendation 1 - Project Plan |
7 |
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Recommendation 2 - PD amendment |
8 |
|
Recommendation 3 - MX zones |
7 |
|
Recommendation 3 and 4 |
1 |
|
Recommendation 4 - Development Types |
1 |
|
Level 1 by points, no TCPD |
1 |
Change in process for Level 2 site plans from 2014-2024, under FAST recommendations
Recommendation
Staff recommends that the Planning Commission receive the presentation, discuss, and provide feedback on the recommended development process improvements.
The following feedback is requested from the Planning Commission:
• Do you support the updated streamlined process for Planned Development Amendments (updated Recommendation 2)?
• Do you support administrative site plan approvals in intense MX zones away from residential (Recommendations 3)?
• Do you support administrative site plan approvals for certain development types (Recommendation 4)?
• Do you support the proposed changes to the points system (new Recommendation 5)?
Previous Related Actions
In October 2018, the Mayor and Council endorsed the original FAST Project Charter. In May 2019, the Mayor and Council endorsed an updated list of action items. Based on this, staff developed and implemented a work plan and presented it to the Mayor and Council in November 2019. Staff provided updates by memo during this first phase of FAST. On September 30, 2024 <https://rockvillemd.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=4910>, the Mayor and Council held a work session on a second phase of FAST. Following this work session, several action items were revised to reflect the Mayor and Council’s direction. At a work session on March 3, 2025 <https://rockvillemd.granicus.com/player/clip/5026?view_id=2&redirect=true>, the Mayor and Council expressed general support for streamlining processes. A majority of the Mayor and Council expressed support for both recommendations one and two related to project plans as presented, but they were not yet comfortable with recommendations three and four related to site plans. They also requested the Planning Commission’s feedback on all four items.
Community Outreach
In anticipation of launching this next phase of FAST, staff established an internal working group, which developed a statement of purpose and outcomes as shown in the draft charter. The team also assessed the development and permitting process and created a list of priority items to improve. In addition, the team engaged external customers through a survey and a listening session, and staff met and received feedback from both REDI and the Rockville Chamber of Commerce.
Next Steps
Staff will report the Planning Commission’s feedback to the Mayor and Council at its July 21 meeting. Staff will then continue to draft revised processes in the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite (ZOR) based on the direction from the Mayor and Council. The draft language will be presented for public review and discussion and further direction from the Mayor and Council through the ZOR process. Planning Commission will conduct future work sessions on July 23 and September 24, 2025.