Troy Development Council/Chamber of Commerce Sound Off On New Code
Vol. IV, No. 68 - Letter Outlines Recommendations to Make New Code More Business Friendly
At their last meeting, the City of Troy Planning Commission received public comments from the Troy Development Council (TDC) and the Troy Area Chamber of Commerce. The comments referenced a six‑page letter outlining how they believe the code should evolve to better serve Troy’s business community. City staff provided this publication with that letter after a public records request. You can view the letter here:
The letter is signed by Paul Oberdorfer, who now leads both organizations as Chief Executive Officer of TDC and President of the Chamber, and it serves as his first major public statement on the city’s development regulations.
Rather than attempting to rewrite the code line by line, the letter sets a clear direction. It calls for a development environment that is more predictable, less discretionary, and more welcoming to investment. In plain terms, the commercial sector is asking the city to reduce friction in the review process and to recognize that uncertainty itself is a cost of doing business in Troy. The tone is steady and partnership‑oriented, which is what you would hope to see from the largest institutional voice for local commerce.
Several themes run through the recommendations. The letter argues that temporary sign regulations should be modernized so that businesses can more easily advertise grand openings, seasonal promotions, and community events without jumping through unnecessary hoops. It also urges the city to continue updating its parking standards by allowing tools such as shared parking, mixed‑use calculations, parking demand studies, and administrative reductions where appropriate, pointing out that there is a lot of money tied up in fields of asphalt that rarely fill up.
Oberdorfer also presses for broader use of administrative approvals, so that routine, code‑compliant projects can be handled by staff while the Planning Commission spends its limited time on true policy questions. Alongside that, the letter encourages replacing subjective language with more objective standards on matters such as building dimensions, landscaping, setbacks, lighting, and architectural criteria, again with the aim of reducing uncertainty for applicants.
The most interesting recommendation, however, concerns the Planning Commission’s role. The letter states, “We encourage the Commission to continue emphasizing its role in long‑range planning, rezonings, Planned Unit Developments, and significant development proposals. Routine technical reviews should be handled administratively whenever appropriate”. On paper, that sounds exactly right. In practice, outside the comprehensive plan and this code rewrite, the Commission has not been particularly strong on the policy side.
If you watch a typical meeting, preliminary and final plats are often handled with breakneck speed, while the bulk of the time and energy is spent on historic district reviews—lengthy discussions about architectural details and paint colors. Those decisions are loosely anchored to the city’s historic guidelines and frequently hinge on the subjective preferences of commissioners who do not appear to have formal training in architecture or design.
In that light, the call to “focus on policy” is less a refinement of the Commission’s existing role and more a challenge to become the kind of body the letter describes. It would mean shifting attention from micromanaging individual design choices toward shaping the long‑term framework for growth: land use, rezonings, Planned Unit Developments, and significant development proposals that set precedent far beyond a single address. That is a heavier lift than the language in the letter might suggest, but it is also where a Planning Commission can add the most value.
For this reason, TDC and the Chamber deserve credit for engaging directly in the most comprehensive update of Troy’s development regulations in our lifetimes. They have chosen to show up, to put their expectations in writing, and to tie those expectations back to economic competitiveness and investment certainty. Here is hoping that on future critical issues, these organizations continue to speak clearly and consistently on behalf of the commercial sectors in our community, and that the city’s boards and commissions rise to meet the higher standard for policy leadership that this letter implicitly sets.
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