The Centennial Land Development Code has been chosen by the Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association as a 2010 Colorado Merit Award winner as an Outstanding Planning Project.

The awards committee called the city’s code an important and innovative “first step” toward achieving new methods of planning in 9-year-old Centennial.

The award represents significant efforts by the city to ensure a long-term vision for responsible development, according to Wayne Reed, the city’s director of planning and development.

“It demonstrates that our community has created a custom-tailored land-development framework to fit the needs of our community,” he said. “The association particularly noted that we were addressing sustainability aspects, which is obviously a hot topic in our industry.”

The city council adopted the wide-ranging land-development code in April. The long-awaited document had been written after receiving input from citizens, business owners and other stakeholders throughout the city.

Reed says the new document has essentially created an intentional vision to meet the existing expectations of Centennial’s residential and business sectors.

“It ensures that we’re going to continue protecting property values while preventing unintended consequences,” he said. “We’ve protected what people already think their neighborhoods provide them.”

Reed says the new city code was also designed to implement the goals of Centennial’s Comprehensive Plan and “Our Voice. Our Vision. Centennial 2030,” a document created by citizen committees in 2008.

The code replaced Arapahoe County’s far less exacting and more rural-minded code that had been inherited by the city at the time of its 2001 incorporation.

“We were working off a more than quarter-century old code,” Reed said of the county’s document. “It did not have the basic zoning districts that applicants could pick from. It did not incorporate charts for particular neighborhoods.”

According to Reed, the new code seeks to protect neighborhoods from adjacent commercial development, while allowing high-quality development and redevelopment of Centennial’s aging commercial centers.

The code has also streamlined the development process for many smaller commercial projects, Reed said.