FAQs

Easier. Eventually. The City of Missoula’s Design Excellence Overlay, Missoula County Zoning Update, and the Mullan Neighborhood Traditional Neighborhood Development Form-Based Code all represent “next level” zoning and land development regulations and they all initially appear more complex than the existing zoning and land development regulations. They are all of the same kind, however, and learning one will help applicants learn the others. Once mastered, many of the stalls present in the current land development process can be avoided.  

Missoula County and Missoula City regulations are all based in the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA) of 1926. Most of Missoula’s regulations have at their core a system of land development which is nearly 100 years old. Planners refer to the existing land development system as “Euclidian Zoning” in reference to the US Supreme Court landmark case, the Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926), which solidified the system. Missoula’s code was, at its heart, older than the widespread ownership of refrigerators. An update in the County, in the City, and across the Mullan Area, was inevitable and these kind of updates are occurring in just about every municipality in the country.  

If you follow these rules, you will have a less expensive and shorter review process, here’s three big reasons …

• The “upzoning” is done. Once adopted by the County, the land will be “up-zoned” in accordance with County and City Comprehensive Plans to the density and intensity level envisioned by those plans. The public involvement process hosted by the County and City is one that individual applicants will not need to host themselves. Today, land development requires a small public relations campaign. This is essential because live in a Democracy. However, that process is costly and time-consuming. Most of the work has been done. 
• The haggling process is (largely) over. The new code makes clear the “public benefit” which necessarily must follow an upzoning and eliminates most of the haggling over open space, buffers, right-of-way sizes, density, intensity, unit mixes, affordability, and so forth, which currently bogs down the development process. As one example, the Mullan Neighborhoods TND code requires applicants to design for the 10-year flood instead of the 100-year flood when it comes to retention of water on their site. We can do this (without fear of the 100-year flood) because large-scale collective stormwater management systems have been built into the plan beforehand. The code also allows for less expensive (and more environmentally-friendly) green infrastructure which once required a special exception to employ. 
• The tools are available to everyone. The new code involves a toolkit of zones, open space types, street types, and building types which need only to be applied to each owner’s site. This pre-approved package of neighborhood elements would otherwise require the expensive expertise of outside land use attorneys, landscape architects, transportation experts, and architects. The fact that the standard has been raised to a level the people of the region expect without the additional cost to developers represents a step forward.”