ORANGE : City Design Review Board Is Modified

The city moved a few steps closer to completing a four-year overhaul of its comprehensive zoning plan last week.

Planning commissioners and City Council members met in a study session to thrash out the final issues in the plan, which they hope to finish before the elections.

The Design Review Board, which approves Old Towne changes, came under fire during the review session. As a result, the five-member board now will have an architect, a landscape architect, a builder and two members of the general public instead of one.

Those board members also will have less latitude to impose their own visions on residents.

“We’re concerned that the board work with what the design applicant wants and not design for them,” said Randy Bosch, chairman of the Planning Commission.

Originally, a consultant had offered a revision of the massive document, but council members and planning commissioners found it was not sufficient, associate planner Barbara Gander said.

A committee of the planning staff then began the long process of reviewing zoning in the city and the historic Old Towne district.

“Overall, we’ve really cleaned up the documents,” Gander said. “It’s easier to find the rules and regulations. It’s really user-friendly. That’s a big change.”

Other changes include a review of minor projects that eliminates public hearings, a more liberal ratio of building to lot size and a loosening of stringent Old Towne sign codes.

The revisions leave less discretion to the city staff, Gander said.