A comprehensive review of Winkler's zoning by-law has been completed.

Winkler's Planning and Permitting Manager, Stephanie Janz says the city's current by-law was adopted in 2008. She note's it's been amended numerous times since then, but it's never undergone a detailed review.

Along with planning professionals from consultant firm, Urban Systems, Janz says they set out to review the current zoning by-law to determine what works well, what they could benefit from, and what some of the city challenges were.

"Since most of the changes identified required a comprehensive internal review, we decided to arrange a series of working sessions between the planning consultants and city staff to review such items as definitions, permitted and conditional uses, and bulk setback regulations in manageable sections."

Janz said the overall goal was to make the by-law more user friendly and easier to administer. "We sought to address several areas and provisions within the by-law that were identified as being unclear, conflicting, or out of date, potentially causing unnecessary administrative processes and costs."

For residential areas, Janz says key changes proposed include the reduction of minimum lot areas and widths for single family and multi-unit dwellings to promote density and affordability. The by-law will also allow two-unit dwellings in residential or lower density zones, or the new R1 Zone to promote housing choice and affordability.

Commercial and Industrial areas will see some changes as well. The proposed updates of the by-law simplifies some retail uses to being either small or large retail. It also includes a reduction of parking minimums, and simplifies landscaping and screening standards. The minimum rear-yard setback of Industrial Zones was increased slightly to provide additional space between industrial land uses.