The City of Gaithersburg has adopted a comprehensive new zoning ordinance that reorganizes and modernizes the ordinance while making it more user friendly. Substantively, the new ordinance adds a new potential zoning category – the MCD Zone (Mixed-Commercial Development), which is created to facilitate developments focused on employment uses. 

The new ordinance takes effect on August 5, 2024, following an 18-month public outreach and review process that commenced in December 2022.

The City of Gaithersburg is located within Montgomery County, Maryland, but has its own planning and zoning authority that is separate from Montgomery County’s authority. As a result, the city has its own planning department, planning commission, and zoning ordinance, which was last comprehensively updated in 1965.  A consultant, ZoneCo, LLC, assisted the city with the entire update effort, which is called “Retool Gaithersburg.”

The city’s stated goals for Retool Gaithersburg are to:

• Improve the organization of the zoning code and overall ease of use and address any inconsistencies within the existing code

• Incorporate visual aids to simplify the readability of the zoning code such as tables, illustrations, and graphics

• Revise zoning code sections to better reflect the city’s goals, policies and visions including providing a diversity of housing options, supporting infill and adaptive reuse development, and removing equity barriers

• Modernize terminology and definitions used throughout the code; and

• Simplify, streamline, or eliminate regulatory processes that add unnecessary costs or create uncertainty.

The updated ordinance largely accomplishes these goals. Retool Gaithersburg does not make any changes to the city’s zoning map itself (for example, how any property within the city is zoned specifically). Instead, any future zoning map changes will be accomplished through master plan updates or individual property rezoning applications. Besides the new MCD Zone, Retool provides other substantive changes to use regulations, dimensional standards, and application and review procedures. The city reviewed all sections of the prior code and left some sections of the prior code unchanged.

Throughout the effort, the city conducted an extensive engagement and outreach program, including focus groups, surveys, and public forums. The mayor and city council and planning commission held several public hearings and work sessions.  Additionally, the city created a dedicated project page website – www.retoolgaithersburg.com – that includes background materials, project updates, various ways for the public to submit comments and stay engaged, and the formal record of the project.  

The new ordinance should allow a greater number of users to understand various zoning provisions and could have a positive effect overall on development within the city.