AUBURN — An effort to fundamentally shift the city’s zoning codes in favor of walkable development kicks off Thursday.

Alan Manoian, Auburn’s economic development specialist, said the Downtown Auburn Form-First project seeks to give the city and its residents the kind of pedestrian-friendly development promised in 1997’s ADAPT plan.

“When they wrote this 17 years ago, they hit it right on the head of where this downtown needs to go and how it needs to live in the future,” Manoian said. “Here we are 17 years later and it didn’t happen, where in many downtowns it did happen. So what is it about downtown Auburn that seems atypical, that kept us from delivering the physical place we need?”

The difference is Auburn’s zoning codes, Manoian said, and it’s time to start changing them.

He hopes to give residents a glimpse of what that would look like Thursday night. It starts with a short walking tour of the area, starting at 5:30 p.m. from the Court Street steps of Auburn Hall.

“I really encourage as many as possible to come out on that tour and really get in the right state of mind,” he said. “I really want people to come back from it really juiced and to viscerally feel the street and what it feels like to be a pedestrian there.”

The group returns to Auburn Hall’s second floor community room for presentation of downtown areas that are walkable and fun to visit. Then, attendees get to work.

“That room will be set up as a design studio with stations,” Manoian said.

Manoian said his goal is to have a rewritten set of form-based zoning codes written and ready for public and Auburn Planning Board review by November.

Manoian said the ADAPT plan, which stands for Auburn’s Downtown Action Plan for Tomorrow, had the right idea. It called for renewed investment in the downtown that would spur investment along the Great Falls and re-energize the downtown as the center of the city’s soul.

“What you have now in that place, you feel that you are going through an area that is disconnected and there is no continual experience,” he said.

The problem is that Auburn’s zoning code was written in the 1950s and 1960s when Auburn was transforming the downtown from a walkable urban area to a car-friendly suburban one. That code relies on defining what uses are acceptable in an area.

“It does not define a unified fabric for the area,” he said. “It tries to relate. It encourages developments to relate but they don’t have to. What ends up being the result is an unpredictable, vague outcome.”

Manoian’s answer is to base Auburn’s zoning codes on forms, not uses, going forward. Developers would design new developments based on how they interact with each other and with pedestrians. All of those elements, including building designs, sidewalk depth, entrances, on-street parking and many others, would be specifically called out in the city’s zoning codes.

“It’s designed to provide people with a broad range of experiences that they want, that they all provided at one time,” he said.

[email protected]