A map of the proposed rezoning of Bentonville.

A mass rezoning of much of Bentonville, along with an entirely new development code, could be approved by the City Council on Tuesday, April 14.

The approvals would mark the conclusion of Plan Bentonville, a multi-year process to decide how — and where — the city should grow in the coming decades.

The first stage of Plan Bentonville focused on creating a Future Land Use Map, with parcel-by-parcel detail on how land should be used. That was completed in February of last year.

The votes Tuesday would turn that vision into a new set of rules for developers to follow.

There are numerous changes in the new code, but the most significant is the overhaul of the zoning districts themselves.

Every property in Bentonville has a zoning district that controls what can be built on it. City planning staff plan to reduce 24 zoning districts down to 16.

Currently, zoning is largely organized around what kind of building is allowed on a property — residential, commercial or industrial.

For example, R-2 allows duplexes, while R-4 allows larger apartment buildings. A property might be zoned C-1, C-2 or C-3 depending on the scale of commercial activity allowed.

The new code would replace those categories with a smaller set of zoning districts based on how dense and tall development can be, rather than what type of use is allowed.

T2 is the most rural and T6 is the most urban. As the number goes up, more building types would be allowed and height limits would increase. All allow for some form of commercial and residential use.

The new zoning districts are based on the concept of "transects" — that development should step down in scope in waves or rings, with the tallest and most active areas in designated centers, gradually transitioning to lower-density neighborhoods at the edges.

"I think with the transect it makes zoning a whole lot more intuitive," City Planning Director Tyler Overstreet said. "The higher the number, the more stuff that could be built, and the more intense things could be built."

The new code's stated purpose includes promoting "compact and mixed-use development in the form of centers and neighborhoods" and limiting "the amount and scale of districts focused on single uses." 

The new code wouldn’t just allow mixed use. In some districts, it would require it. The higher-intensity transect districts (T5.1, T5.2 and T6) require commercial uses like shops or restaurants on the ground floor. Purely residential buildings wouldn’t be allowed in these zones.

Additionally, developments over 40 acres would have to include a mix of zoning districts, meaning they couldn’t all be one thing.

For most of the city, this would be more of a rezoning than an upzoning.

The city created a guide mapping each old district to a new one. Many properties would land in similar categories, in terms of what can be built and how tall it can be.

“We have tried to keep them as close to a one to one as we can,” Overstreet said.

However, some areas would see meaningful changes to what can be built.

“There will be more density in some areas of the city, but it's in alignment with an adopted plan, and it's creating more cohesive neighborhoods,” Overstreet said. 

The most notable exception to the new transect rules are the swathes of the city that would remain zoned R-1, Low Density Single Family Residential. 

The old R-2, R-3 and R-4 designations would be absorbed into new transect districts, but R-1 would not. 

If a home is currently zoned R-1, the zoning wouldn’t change. The same height limits and existing rules would remain.

While R-1 doesn’t fit neatly into the new “transect” system, it’s what residents told city planners they wanted, according to Overstreet.

“There's a large portion of Bentonville who loves their R-1, suburban, single family neighborhood, so we left that zoning district in,” he said.

When a new development goes up near an existing neighborhood, the biggest concern for residents is often how tall the buildings will be and whether they'll fit in with surroundings.

In addition to the base zoning rules, the new code includes standards for height limits, setbacks and landscaped buffers between different zoning districts.

Overall, the new code “pays a lot more attention to what happens on the edges of that place to make sure that there are proper transitions,” Overstreet said. “Typical zoning codes don’t do that.”

For example, if R-1 (Low Density Single-Family Residential) is next to T6 (Urban Center):