How we treat our land is one of the most important challenges facing us today. Many critical decisions about land use are made at the local level, through a community's master plan, zoning laws, subdivision regulations and complementary programs.

Unfortunately, conventional land use regulation such as zoning often fails to protect significant environmental resources. The original, early 20th century concept of zoning regulation was to make living conditions safer by dividing a municipality into different areas; locating, for example, factories and industries in one area and housing in another.

Built on this concept of separation of uses, zoning evolved into a tool for planning the direction of a town's future expansion to best suit its transportation, health and safety needs. More recently, protecting important environmental resources has also become a major issue.

What is an "overlay district"?

An "overlay district" is a special zone that is drawn on a map outlining a significant resource. The resource could be an aquifer, a watershed, a shoreline, an historic area or a mountain ridge. This district is "overlaid" on the existing land use regulations such as subdivision requirements, site plan review or zoning districts of the town. The overlay district then supplements these existing regulations. This approach allows a town to maintain or update current codes while addressing the special needs of particularly sensitive areas.

A good example of overlay districts is floodplains, where any housing or construction must meet certain extra standards in order to be approved. This is done to protect lives and property and ensure the natural functioning of the floodplain.

Overlay districts are currently used in many towns across New York State and the country for a variety of purposes, including protecting agricultural resources, historic properties, aquifers, road corridors and gateways, and scenic views.

Other common examples of overlay districts found throughout the State include:

• Historic or Architectural Review Districts for special neighborhoods or downtowns
• Access Management and Road Corridor Standards along major gateway routes.
• Agricultural protection and Right to Farm standards in prime farmland areas.
• Watershed Protection around reservoirs, aquifers, and shorelines.
• Scenic Views to and from ridgelines, shorelines, and special features.

Advantages of overlay districts

An overlay district:

• can be written and mapped to incorporate whatever features are most important to a town. Boundaries can be easily defined using tax lot lines, roads, and existing slope or soils maps which closely approximate the feature of interest.
• can address all of the town's concerns regarding any proposed land use change inside the district. Anything that might impact the quality of the proposed mapped feature can be addressed, including road requirements, frontage, lot size, lot coverage, setbacks, tree cutting, vegetation buffers, siting of houses, lighting and open-space natural areas.
• can easily be implemented by passing a town law appending it to the existing land use regulations. Substantial rewriting of underlying zoning, site plan review or subdivision regulations is not required.
• can be modified in the future should the town discover it wished to add or modify items. Using an overlay district, a municipality continues to protect its own resources without the imposition of authority from outside agencies. The decision-making process, therefore, is kept at the local level where stewardship can remain a point of community pride. Officials and involved citizens retain the opportunity to exercise self-determination and self-responsibility for their town's future.

Geographic features, like scenic views, watersheds or river corridors, extend across several municipalities. Adoption of similar overlay districts by adjoining towns can also permit more consistent region wide planning for such a feature, rather than piecemeal protection.

Benefits

The real power and effectiveness of overlay districts lies in the fact that all the parties involved in the land development review process can benefit. This includes the town, the property owner or developer and the public. While the standards and requirements to the developer are different than they are in other, non-overlaid zoning districts, the public hearing procedure to obtain approvals is the same.

Since the guidelines and expectations for the overlay district are clearly defined in advance, battles over environmental issues at board meetings among the town, a developer and the public may also be minimized or eliminated.

When building in an overlay district, a developer will have a clear understanding of the town's expectations and realistic development possibilities at the beginning of the approval process, before major commitments or expenditures are made. Since measures to protect the environment are built into the overlay district site plan from the beginning, the environmental review (SEQR) process can be effectively focused. This can lead to quicker, less costly approval process.

Sample and model overlay district language for a variety of environmental resources is available from the New York Planning Federation. Contact the Federation at 44 Central Avenue, Albany, NY 12206, call 800-366-6973 or go on-line at www.nypf.org.

David Church is Executive Director of the New York Planning Federation.

Related Links

New York Planning Federation

Urban Land Institute

New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association

NYS Quality Communities Clearinghouse