The new Kingston zoning code should promote more diverse housing stock, denser urban neighborhoods and more bike- and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes.

Those were some of the takeaways from a week-long series of public meetings, walking tours and focus groups focused on getting opinions from residents and stakeholders, as Kingston embarks on its first comprehensive rezoning effort in 60 years.

The findings, and a series of sample maps and proposed changes, were presented last week at an in-person forum at City Hall as Florida-based urban planning consultants Dover, Kohl & Partners begin work in earnest on a new “form-based” zoning code that, if approved, will entirely replace the city’s current system of land-use regulations. Plans call for replacing the city’s current zoning code with one which emphasizes organizing neighborhoods around building design and placement, while allowing for more flexibility in use.

Dover, Kohl principal Victor Dover said the old code was a vestige of the post-World War II “suburban explosion,” while the new code would be more in line with the way urban neighborhoods had been designed for millennia. The new code will also be designed for predictability and simplicity, something Dover suggested would make investing in the city more attractive to both large-scale developers and smaller investors who might otherwise be put off by a cumbersome, expensive and unpredictable approval process.

“That old document dates from 1961, a very different time in Kingston and in America,” said Dover. “It’s time to replace that tool with one that better matches the community values of Kingston today and for the 21st century.”

A number of themes had emerged from last week’s public forums, Dover said, including concern about the protecting the historic character of some city neighborhoods and the need to promote mixed-use development and fill in vacant or underutilized urban spaces. Many people, Dover said, believed off-street parking requirements in the current code were onerous and served as an impediment to development.

Participants in the forums also discussed the need to “knit back together” the city’s Rondout neighborhood where the demolition of entire blocks during ’60s-era Urban Renewal had left the area disjointed and difficult to traverse.

But, Dover said, the number-one theme to emerge from the public engagement effort, was the need for the new code to promote the development of more affordable housing in the city.

“In every single conversation, Kingstonians have been telling us that there needs to be more housing and there needs to be specific approaches to encouraging more affordable housing,” said Dover.

To accomplish that, the new code would provide for more types and sizes of residential units and, in some neighborhoods, ease lot size and setback requirements to allow for more “urban infilling.” Dover said the new code would also allow for construction of more “accessory dwelling units,” like spare apartments built into single-family homes or in outbuildings like garages. A recent effort to amend the city’s zoning code to make it easier to build ADUs stalled, in part because lawmakers encountered strong pushback over concerns of neighborhood overcrowding, impact on parking and other quality-of-life issues.

But, Dover said, the idea was for the new code to ensure the “right type” of ADUs get built in the right areas of the city.

Other Dover, Kohl associates zoomed in on particular areas of the city to look at more neighborhood specific issues. In Midtown, for example, the team found that a lack of guidance about building frontage and placement impeded efforts to create more compact streetscapes in the city’s most traditionally urban neighborhood. In Ponckhockie, planners found that nearly half of the existing buildings did not conform to the current zoning code in regard to lot size, building height or other criteria — a vestige of the 1961 code simply being laid over a historic neighborhood with pre-existing development patterns. The team suggested the new code should better reflect those historic patterns in the Downtown neighborhood.

The Dover, Kohl team will continue to receive public input as it works towards producing a first draft of the new code by March 2022. The firm’s contract calls for another round of public input on the draft before a final version is delivered in June 2022.

At that point, the plan will then undergo a lengthy vetting process under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. That process will involve working with the public, as well as a host of “involved agencies” and stakeholders to identify potential negative impacts of the new code and how they can be eliminated or mitigated. Once the SEQRA process is complete, it will be up to the Kingston Common Council to accept or reject the new code.