The City of Norfolk has a diverse mix of design character, ranging from the urban downtown area, to suburban subdivisions and industrial areas. Norfolk wants to continue to grow as this region’s urban center while addressing the challenges of recurrent flooding, economic stability and neighborhood integrity, and it requires comprehensive and coordinated planning to do so. EPR is working with a team to provide a variety of urban planning and design services to meet the City’s needs.
Resilience Standards for the Norfolk Zoning Ordinance
As part of the on-call, EPR is supporting the development of resilience standards, research and testing for the proposed new Norfolk Zoning Ordinance. EPR recently supported the City’s “Building a Better Norfolk,” the new city zoning ordinance rewrite.
Through a review of the current draft ordinance as well as innovative and effective best practices, the consultant team provided an assessment of the current Draft Ordinance in the context of their adopted Resilience Strategy and Vision 2100 to enhance and prioritize the City’s resilience standards. Following the review, EPR summarized the findings into a technical Memorandum and then developed specific ordinance language for modifying and enhancing the Draft Ordinance. The final set of Resilience Standards will be recommended for inclusion in the City’s new Zoning Ordinance. This effort is a key part of meeting the objective of making Norfolk’s new zoning ordinance the most resilient ordinance in the nation!