Planning staff outlines land-use code rewrite to reduce conditional-use burden

On Jan. 21, 2026 planning staff gave a preview of a citywide land-use-code cleanup intended to remove inconsistencies and administrative burdens from Cottonwood Heights' zoning regulations. Staff said the project will extract all permitted and conditional uses into a consolidated table, normalize naming conventions, draft missing definitions, and relocate scattered procedural rules into clearer chapters.

"For each zoning district, there's a list of permitted uses and conditional uses," staff said, noting the current code sometimes forces routine businesses into expensive conditional-use reviews. Staff demonstrated an initial use table and said drafts of revised use tables and procedures would return to the commission in phases for review and adoption.

Commissioners welcomed the effort, saying it would benefit applicants and reduce staff workload. Staff framed the project as an administrative update that will be brought back in stages, focusing first on use tables and definitions and later on conditional-use and site-plan procedures.