Developing in Redmond has just become easier with the city’s new and enhanced Electronic Zoning Code, or EZ-Code.
The new product is the culmination of years of work from city staff that began in 2009 with a rewrite of Redmond’s development regulations, which was completed in 2011.
“We did that because the zoning code hadn’t had a comprehensive refreshment since the 1970s,” said Jeff Churchill, a senior planner for the City of Redmond.
Once the rewrite was adapted in April 2011, the next step was to go paperless and make the previously 900-page code accessible online. The result is a zoning code with various features that make it easy to research specific zones, properties or uses.
“The new electronic code is tightly integrated with the city’s GIS maps and data, allowing for functionality that, to the best of the city’s knowledge, is unmatched anywhere in the nation,” said Redmond Mayor John Marchione in a press release.
The new EZ-Code features direct links from properties to applicable zoning regulations, maps of zones, critical areas and other key code provisions and pop-up definitions for various terms. Users will also be able to see where a use is allowed and link to applicable regulations, look up commercial properties for sale or lease, access user guides and more.
Churchill said one of the challenges they faced in creating the EZ-Code has been getting the different pieces of technology to talk to each other.
This may be the case, but Redmond City Council member Kim Allen said the result has exceeded her expectations for the new zoning code.
“Combining these features is what makes it unique,” she said.
Allen, who joined the City of Redmond’s Planning Commission in the early 2000s and was the council lead on the code rewrite, is a land-use attorney and said after looking at various jurisdictions’ zoning codes, she realized Redmond’s code “could use some work.”
“This was something I’ve wanted since I was a planning commissioner,” she said.
While Allen is happy with EZ-Code, Churchill said they’re not done with it yet.
“There are some features we are still working on for the future,” he said.
Some of these features include optimizing the EZ-Code for tablets, although it is already accessible. Churchill said they also want to add structure information and active and past permit history to the list of things users will be able to access with just a click of a button.
“(EZ-Code) makes lot more information available to (the community) at their fingertips,” he said. “People can answer a lot of the more basic questions themselves.”
Redmond Planning Director Rob Odle said this was exactly what they wanted with the new code.
He said the former code was almost impossible to sort through without the help of a developer or land-use attorney.
“That’s not what we want,” Odle said. “That’s not the customer service we want. That’s not the transparency we want.”
He added that now that the code is online, it can be accessed from anywhere and prospective developers and businesses could view properties and sites without having to visit in person.
For more information, visit www.redmond.gov/ZoningCode.
