Comprehensive and Small Area Plans
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Welcome
News: Butner Gateways Ordinance Changes |
Umstead / Town Center Small Area Plan |
To view the changes, click here: Ordinance Changes - see parts in Red Text....these are the changes and additions to the existing Land Development Ordinance for these areas:
1 East Butner Gateway 2. Butner Cove Gateway 3. Butner Cove Village A presentation addressing the changes is located here: click here. The map shown below shows the areas where the zoning applies. |
Documents Associated with the Town Center and Umstead Project Areas
Project Planning Visuals
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Imagine Butner in 2040 -
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Butner Town Planning Customer and Resident Information
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“If you don’t know where you are going, you could wind up someplace else.”
Yogi Berra
Butner 2040: Why Having a Vision Matters

Peering into the future is a favorite exercise for planners and designers. From the Chicago 1893 Columbian Exhibition to New York City’s two Worlds Fairs (1939 and 1965) and beyond, the future was optimistic and filled with cool technology and architecture. What do we think the future will look like 20 years or so from now? And what will Butner be like in 2040? The quality of our Town's future depends on the choices we make today. The foundation of the Imagine Butner 2040 Comprehensive Plan is the Mapping and Suitability Analysis which is a GIS-based build-out model that estimates potential future growth in the Butner.
What is a Comprehensive Plan?Imagine Butner 2040 is the town's comprehensive look at itself. Required by state statute, a Comprehensive Plan is fiscally neutral (basically as fancy way of saying the Plan requires no commitment of funds to implement any part of the Plan).
A Comprehensive plan, may also be known as a general plan, master plan or land-use plan, is a document designed to guide the future actions of a community. It presents a vision for the future, with long-range goals and objectives for all activities that affect the local government. This includes guidance on how to make decisions on public and private land development proposals, the expenditure of public funds, availability of tax policy (tax incentives), cooperative efforts and issues of pressing concern, such as farmland preservation or the rehabilitation of older neighborhoods areas. Most plans are written to provide direction for future activities over a 20-year period after plan adoption. However, plans should receive a considered review and possible update every ten years. In 2009, Butner completed its first Comprehensive Plan. A copy of that plan, the 2020 Butner Comprehensive Plan may be found here. A community comprehensive plan serves the following functions:
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Historically, visions and master plans may begin as two-dimensional drawings, but they have had little to do with specific architectural styles, land uses, or regulations. These visions ultimately succeed because they recognize the three-dimensional wholeness of a community and the ways the community functions. Often overlooked and frequently disregarded outright, it is the imperative of a community's leaders and planners to consider the three-dimensional framework of a town. If this is done, then the community grows up and becomes timeless.
Great towns were not expensive to build; they grew not in one fell swoop but over time. They incorporate the nature environment into the built environment. Our community's growth can be directly attributed to its proximity to the economic engine of Durham, Raleigh, Research Triangle, and other Triangle assets like North Carolina State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina. What are the elements then that come together to make a three-dimensional, great town? First, the seed, or vision must be planted and spring to life in the minds and hearts of citizens. Next, the Town must cultivate an environment for the healthy growth of this entity; it must lay the foundation upon which the private sector can contribute to the healthy development of the Town. Vision Ingredients Based in Reality...Building a road map for the future we have to consider:
We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
Winston Churchill Plans Impacting Butner's Long-Range Planning
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A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.
James Howard Kunstler
2040 Comprehensive Plan Pages |
Planning and Zoning Department Pages |