Old Town Character Plan and Zoning Updates

Originally adopted by the City Council in 1984, updated in 2009, and again most recently in 2018, the Old Town Scottsdale Character Area Plan (formerly Downtown Plan) serves as the comprehensive policy document that guides growth and development decisions for Downtown Scottsdale. The plan contains goals, policies illustrative graphics and suggested projects to articulate and achieve the community’s vision for Old Town Scottsdale.

The Old Town Scottsdale Character Area Plan is a goal and policy document that helps guide growth and development decisions for downtown. The Downtown sections (Downtown, Downtown Overlay, and Planned Block Development Districts) of the Zoning Ordinance are regulations that provide specific land use and development standards for each property in downtown. These regulatory standards help implement the community’s vision and goals for downtown, as described in the Old Town Scottsdale Character Area Plan.

The original Old Town Character Area Plan (then Downtown Plan) was adopted in 1984. After 20+ years, the Downtown Plan went through an extensive update in 2009 largely due to the fact that the implementation items under the 1984 Plan had been accomplished. In 2018, the Plan was again updated because the vast majority of implementation items incorporated into the 2009 Plan were achieved. At the same time, a tourism rebranding/renaming of Downtown to Old Town occurred, thus the change from Downtown Plan to Old Town Character Area Plan. The public outreach for updating the Plan in 2018 occurred over a period of nine months, and the updated plan was unanimously adopted by the City Council in July 2018.

On June 22, 2021 City Council requested future public outreach to consider the following (with no priority in the listing):

• The provision of quality new development and redevelopment;
• Development Type designations, locations, and transitions to one another found in the Plan;
• The consideration of development flexibility in the Plan, Zoning Ordinance, and Guidelines;
• Re-examination of the use of downtown land use designations, districts, and development types in the Plan and Ordinance;
• The provision of more interconnected, public open space areas in Old Town;
• Providing stronger development requirements in the Zoning Ordinance and the Old Town Scottsdale Urban Design and Architectural Guidelines;
• Maintaining, adding, restricting, reducing, or removing Zoning Ordinance base development standards and bonus provisions; and
• Ensuring that bonus provisions within the Zoning Ordinance, if maintained, provide greater and better-defined public benefits, and re-examining bonus payment calculations.

To promote best practices with public outreach, the Public Participation Plan includes opportunities for community involvement such as open houses, focus groups, presentations to community groups, and online engagement that began in Fall of 2021, concluding with Planning Commission and City Council public hearings in the Spring of 2023.

You can register and participate in public participation opportunities as they are made available and/or provide input by submitting your comments online, above. Furthermore, you may participate in the Planning Commission and City Council public meetings by submitting written comments or speaking in-person at these meetings.

The Old Town Scottsdale Character Area Plan, Zoning Ordinance Sections, and Guidelines are available for review on the City's website.

• Old Town Scottsdale Character Area Plan
• Downtown (D)
• Downtown Overlay (DO)
• Planned Block Development (PBD)
• Downtown Infill Incentive Plan
• Old Town Scottsdale Urban Design + Architectural Guidelines