Ketchum planner and consultant outline steps in zoning code rewrite | News
During a meeting on Oct. 14, Ketchum Planning and Zoning commissioners were given a comprehensive presentation on the city’s land-use code update process.
Ultimately, the code will contain zoning ordinances for all districts that flow from the policies set out in the city’s recently approved “Cohesive Ketchum Comprehensive Plan.”
Ketchum’s spokesperson Daniel Hansen told the Express that the total code update would likely be a two- to three-year process.
Ketchum’s Planning and Building Director Morgan Landers and Matt Goebel of Denver-based Goebel Partners, LLC, explained how code changes and revisions would advance toward official approval in installments.
Goebel was previously with Clarion Associates, a consulting firm the city hired to help write the 2025 comprehensive plan. Goebel left the firm and started his own, Goebel Partners, LLC. The City Council approved a contract with his firm in July for $149,688.
The Ketchum City Council is holding public hearings on a recently updated and consolidated draft of the city’s existing land-use code that includes changes in formatting, structure and content.
After the public hearings conclude, the city will begin to rewrite the updated existing code to reflect the recently adopted comprehensive plan, a document that will guide Ketchum development for years to come.
The city will approach the final code rewrite in three installments.
The first installment, slated to begin this month, will focus on Ketchum’s downtown, a floor-area-ratio bonus program, design guidelines, affordable commercial space and a local business priority program.
Installment two will look at residential areas, floodplain, avalanches and general environmental and sustainability improvements.
The final installment will focus on hotel regulations, the Warm Springs base area overlay, the light industrial district, clarification of code definitions and cleanup items.
“These installments were put together to really get low-hanging fruit [first] and also to get issues that the community identified as the most important for moving forward,” Goebel said.
He shared a workflow for assessing and organizing the installments.
The process will begin with a draft of the code produced by Goebel’s firm with guidance from the city. City staff will then make any necessary revisions before the document is passed to a Technical Advisory Group—a newly formed group that brings together members of the community with diverse experiences to provide a “gut check” on his firm and the city’s work on the code, Goebel said.
The TAG is composed of 20 members from the community and will act as a “sounding board” moving forward, Goebel said. It is comprised of architects, landscaping and engineering representatives, contractors, developers, planning representatives, trade association representatives, a Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission representative and a Historic Preservation Commission representative.
“At its core, the technical advisory group is intended to be experts within their fields … helping us understand how things actually get done, so that we don’t make rules that don’t work,” Landers said.
After TAG reviews each installment draft, the code updates will go before the Ketchum P&Z for discussion and review. The Ketchum City Council would then need to approve each installment after holding public hearings, with three being the minimum.
Landers said the city would codify each installment on an individual basis.
Goebel said that alongside his firm’s initial draft, he will provide the city with additional options and questions to best address specific issues.
In an Express interview, when asked about the city’s hiring of outside consultants for projects like the code update, Goebel said, “I think consultants can provide a variety of helpful aspects… . They can bring in best-practice experience from elsewhere in Idaho, the Mountain West and elsewhere in the country. That’s not to say somebody else has done it the right way that has to be followed in Ketchum.”
Hiring of his firm, Goebel said, helps reduce burden on city staff and provides more ears in the community to listen to residents.
“Ketchum is also a unique place, and it’s not like some outside consultant is going to know exactly what’s right for Ketchum without talking to the people in Ketchum,” he said.
Landers said the length of the process needed to complete each installment is long because of the time it takes for research, public outreach and the public meeting process.
“We don’t like to use the public as guinea pigs. We don’t want to just try things and then have a lot of unintended consequences that we just keep having to go back and fix,” Landers said. 
