LEXINGTON, Ky. — Lexington’s Planning Commission got its first look Thursday at a sweeping zoning ordinance rewrite designed to ensure the development standards laid out in the city’s Urban Growth Master Plan survive the shift to ministerial review under state law, while also receiving updates on a newly signed growth management ordinance, proposed floodplain protections and a long-range vision for the Blue Sky Parkway industrial corridor.
The work session, held Feb. 19 at the Phoenix Building, covered five substantive items in roughly two hours, with no formal votes taken. The session served as a policy preview for several initiatives that will come before the commission for action in the coming months.
Closing the House Bill 443 Gap
The most consequential item may have been the one with the least fanfare. Planner Daniel Crum told commissioners that staff is drafting a zoning ordinance text amendment — a change to the city’s land-use regulations — that would convert the recommendations embedded in the 2024 Urban Growth Master Plan from advisory language into enforceable, objective standards.
The issue stems from House Bill 443, a 2025 state law that limits local planning commissions’ discretionary review of final development plans to objective health, safety and welfare standards. Under the current framework, commissioners can evaluate preliminary development plans against the master plan’s goals for road connectivity, pedestrian infrastructure, shared commercial driveways and other design elements. But once a project advances to the final development plan stage, it is reviewed by staff through the Technical Review Committee using only the rules already written into the zoning ordinance…