Comprehensive Plans

Examples & Resources

Also known as a Master Plan, this document serves as the major land use planning document and guide for your community. This document lays out a land use vision for your community. Most communities have a Comp Plan, some do not. If your community doesn’t have a Comp Plan, you can push to have one adopted, and seek strong language in the Plan that will ban superstores, or restrict their size and location. Comp Plans are written to be organic documents, and state law may require that they be updated every five years or more often, but they can be updated in response to community pressure for more growth management protections. State law may also require that local land use decisions be compatible with a State Guide Plan as well. Your State Representative or Senator can direct you to your state’s zoning law. In other states, Comp Plans are more of a guide to planning decisions, but do not have the force of law. Either way, good language in a Comp Plan can deter big box retail.

A Comprehensive Plan is a public document available from your city or town clerk, sometimes for a small copying charge. The Comp Plan will contain a series of land use goals and policies for the community. It will have a Land Use section, a section on Housing, Economic Development, Natural Resources/Environment, Public Services, Open Space, Traffic, etc. It will have maps that show how each general area of land is zoned, and how it should be used in the future. It will also have demographic information about your community’s past population growth, and its future projections.

Local groups can use statements made in the Comp Plan to raise objections to a Wal-Mart proposal that is not consistent with a Comprehensive Plan. For example, often a Wal-Mart proposal will need a zoning change. The land they want may be zoned residential, industrial, or agricultural. That change may not be what is called for in the Comp Plan for that parcel. Wal-Mart, or its developer, will ask the town to make a change in its Comprehensive Plan, but any Comp Plan change or rezoning is not a right. Such decisions are discretionary on the part of local authorities, which are often the City Council. So what a Comp Plan says can be critical.

Every community, no matter what size, should assume at some point that they are going to be on the receiving end of an out-of-scale retail development. The first line of defense is to redraft your Comprehensive Plan to make changes that will keep out the large projects.

Comprehensive Plan Example Items

  • A land use goal that calls for all commercial development to be predominately town-serving in character, not regional.
  • A goal that requires that all commercial development be consistent in size with the surrounding built environment.
  • A goal that seeks to prevent incompatible non-residential uses in residential neighborhoods.
  • A goal that requires independent traffic studies, wetland studies, and economic impact studies of all major developments, including the net revenues and net expenses to the city or town, market need for the project, net impact on employment, etc.
  • A goal that encourages the reuse of existing commercial sites and infill of existing areas already commercially zoned, and discourages commercial rezonings on “green field” undeveloped land.
  • A goal that places a cap on the size of commercial buildings in all commercial zones.
  • A goal that requires a special use permit for any commercial land in excess of 5 acres, which shall be classified as a “development of regional impact”
  • A goal that requires developers to pay for the cost of independent expert studies, selected by the town, necessary to evaluate a land use proposal, including traffic impact, economic impact study, stormwater management, wetlands and water resources protection.
  • A goal that requires all commercial projects that abut residentially zoned land not have an adverse impact on the residential valuations of surrounding residential properties.
  • A goal providing for orderly growth by prohibiting any single commercial development that will incrementally increase the existing level of traffic on affected roadways by more than 5%.
  • A goal that requires developers of projects larger than 5 acres to meet with abutters and prepare a report to the town of the neighbor’s major objections to the proposal, and the developer’s action plan to address each objection.
  • A goal that says a top priority for the community is the preservation and
    expansion of existing businesses, and discouraging commercial activity on the periphery of town.
  • A goal that says new development shall not be permitted to lower the “level of service” along any roadways in town, but must meet or improve current traffic conditions on all roadways.

Developers will often ask for a Comp Plan change at the same time they pursue a zoning change. That’s why the best time to propose the kind of changes you want is when a big box proposal is not currently under review by planners.