Amador County – The Plymouth Planning Commission held a public hearing last week and slightly revised the downtown design guidelines, which will be taken to the City Council at a later date, for a public hearing.

On Wednesday, Aug. 1 the Planning Commission recommended the Downtown Design Guidelines after a public hearing, the last time the commission will see the guidelines before they are considered by the Plymouth City Council.

City Planer Jeff Beiswenger said the design guidelines have been in the making for the several years, and were nearly approved by the City Council in 2009. Instead, the council directed some changes, and sent the guidelines back to the Commission, which returned to them in April and held a public hearing last week.

Beiswenger said no significant changes have occurred since the project first started a few years back. In 2009 the Council almost adopted the downtown design guidelines but wanted a few changes made. It sat idle for a couple of years, and then the Commission reinitiated the process of adopting them. It was idle because no development was occurring, and also because of staffing changes.

The Plymouth City Council and Planning Commission held a joint meeting in April and made some minor changes. One was removal of a separate Architecture Review Commission. Beiswenger said that was eliminated with the understanding that the Planning Commission would serve as the review body for design review.

Other changes, including picking a palate of color for a “uniformity for color.” They selected an earth tone color palate. Another issue that had considerable discussion but no changes was the boundary for the downtown area to be covered by the guidelines. The area will be the downtown east to Highway 49 on the east side and it continues to commercially zoned property on Main Street.

Beiswenger said there will be a separate set of design guidelines for the Highway 49 corridor, which won’t apply to downtown. He said it would be different, probably more focused on landscaping and more related to the visual aspects of its site planning, landscaping, and building form, rather than trying to match up with the historic character.

The City Council will address the downtown design guidelines at an undetermined date after a required public notice period. The guidelines will not affect the Reeder Sutherland residential developments, which are planned developments that have separate design guideline documents that go with them.

Story by Jim Reece.