The County’s Zoning Rewrite Comes to the Woodmoor Barn Monday

El Paso County planners and their consultants will present the draft rewrite of the county’s Land Development Code at the Woodmoor Barn on Monday, September 21, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It is the only session in the county’s September series scheduled in the Tri-Lakes area. Written comments on the draft close at 5 p.m. on October 16.

The Land Development Code is the rulebook for unincorporated El Paso County: what may be built, where, how large, and with what parking, lighting, landscaping and water. In the Tri-Lakes it governs Woodmoor, Gleneagle and the county land surrounding Monument and Palmer Lake, including the Monument Hill parcel where Buc-ee’s plans a travel center. It does not govern land inside either town.

The county lists the meeting as “Let’s Talk Zoning: NEPCO & Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce” and says it is intended to inform members of the Northern El Paso County Coalition of Community Organizations (NEPCO) and of the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce. RSVPs are optional. El Paso County Planning and Community Development staff and Clarion Associates, the land-use consultancy the county hired in 2024 to write the new code, are facilitating.

What the Draft Would Change

The document under review combines Module 1, zoning districts and uses, with Module 2, development standards. It runs to 516 pages, was released on July 14 and was revised on September 13. Several provisions bear directly on the Tri-Lakes.

• Apartments and townhomes. The two multi-dwelling districts, RM-12 and RM-30, merge into a single Residential Flex district allowing up to 30 units an acre and buildings up to 45 feet, served by central water and wastewater.
• Large retail. “Convenience store,” the term at the center of the Buc-ee’s appeal, disappears as a separate use. It is folded into “Retail, General,” which is sorted by floor area. Stores larger than 75,000 square feet would be confined to one district, Light Employment, and there only by special use.
• The C-1 district. C-1, the zoning on the Buc-ee’s site, does not appear in the draft’s table converting current districts to new ones, and the draft does not otherwise say what becomes of it.
• Water. The water resources report requirement would reach beyond subdivisions. New or amended applications for a planned unit development, a rezoning, a site development plan, a special use review or a change of use would need one where no earlier report exists, or where the planning director expects the project to increase water demand beyond what an approved report already covers.
• Accessory dwelling units. ADUs would be allowed across most agricultural and residential districts, one per lot, no larger than the main house.

The county replaced the file on September 13, eight days before Monday’s session and 10 days after the county’s Black Forest session. The replacement keeps the July cover date, and neither the document, the comment page, the project blog nor the county news feed records what changed. Most of the edits are clerical. Several loosen standards: a rule requiring mixed-use and nonresidential buildings to have an entrance facing the street was deleted, though a separate orientation rule for apartment buildings remains, a 60 percent cap on garage frontage for attached homes became a suggestion, and language limiting private roads and allowing commissioners to deny them was removed. The zoning district and use tables are unchanged.

What the Draft Leaves Out

The draft does not say how applications will be processed. The chapters on procedures, nonconformities, and violations and enforcement each read “[To be drafted in Module 3: Administration and Procedures].” That module, which will set who is notified of a proposal and which decisions get a public hearing, has not been released.

The county’s August 2024 code assessment originally scheduled the project from May 2024 through April 2026. That timetable has slipped. As of September 20, no adoption hearing dates had been published on the project website.

The Independent’s fuller account of the draft is here. The Independent will attend Monday’s session and report on it.

Getting there

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: El Paso County Is Rewriting the Rules the Buc-ee’s Fight Turned On · Community calendar listing for Monday’s session

County record: Land Development Code project event list · LDC Modules 1 & 2 draft and comment portal · Project document library, including the August 2024 code assessment

Methodology

The provisions described here were read in the draft the county is serving now, downloaded from the comment portal on September 20 and read section by section: the district conversion table, the Residential Flex standards, the retail use rows and their footnote, the accessory dwelling unit standards, the water supply chapter, and the four chapters deferred to Module 3. The statement that the file changed on September 13 rests on the portal’s own modification timestamp and on a line-by-line comparison of the current text against the July 14 version the Independent archived on September 4; the two extractions were compared in full, and the zoning district and use tables were compared again separately with their column spacing intact. The Independent found no notice of the replacement on the comment page, the project blog or the county news feed, and has not asked the county about it. The project’s email newsletter was not reviewed. The Independent has retained both extractions and the comparison used here.