Town of Silverton: Land Use Code Update - Planning Excellence Award
In early 2025, the Town of Silverton adopted a new Land Use Code (LUC), completing a multiyear effort to align the Town’s development regulations with the Compass Master Plan. The project highlights how small, mountain communities can take on comprehensive code reform while keeping local identity and small-town scale front and center.
The 2022 Compass Master Plan set the stage by establishing a clear community vision: preserve Silverton’s funky, historic mountain character while providing more housing choices and economic opportunities. Led by the Town, in partnership with Clarion Associates, Urban Rural Continuum, and Community Planning Strategies, the LUC rewrite translated that vision into a modern regulatory framework. The process emphasized broad engagement, pairing traditional hearings with creative tools like “Cookies & Code” open houses, mapping activities at concerts, and student-led discussions on building height. These strategies built trust and kept residents invested in the technical work of code drafting.
The new LUC addresses several challenges familiar to planners in mountain or rural contexts. Housing flexibility was expanded by allowing duplexes, live/work units, cottage courts, and manufactured or tiny home parks by right in more districts, with clear design standards to ensure compatibility. To prevent larger, out-of-scale single-unit homes, the Code adopted maximum building footprints rather than floor area ratios, a context-sensitive metric that may offer lessons for other small-lot, high-demand communities. Outdated overlays were replaced with hazard-specific standards for avalanche zones, steep slopes, floodplains, and wildfire-prone areas. The LUC also introduced outdoor lighting standards that meet DarkSky International thresholds, advancing Silverton’s goal of becoming a certified Dark Sky Community. These provisions demonstrate how small towns can integrate resilience and sustainability into everyday regulations without overburdening staff capacity. The Historic District Overlay was strengthened with clearer review thresholds and adoption of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, positioning Silverton to qualify as a Certified Local Government. The design standards for Greene Street, the Town’s commercial corridor, have been refined to balance historic integrity with flexibility for reinvestment.
Silverton’s successful LUC update was a result of phased drafting, clear communication tools, hands-on engagement tailored to the local community, and a dedicated project team. The project consolidated three code chapters into one, streamlined development processes, increased opportunities for administrative (staff-level) approvals, and established clear and objective review criteria for the decision-making bodies. The final result is a more user-friendly, equitable, and resilient code that reflects both best practices and the distinctive realities of a high-alpine community.
As a case study, Silverton demonstrates that code modernization is not just a big-city exercise. With a clear roadmap, strong partnerships, and sustained engagement, even the smallest communities can create land use regulations that both honor local identity and tackle contemporary challenges.