WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW

FARGO GROWTH PLAN 2024

Fargo, ND

HOW CAN A RAPIDLY GROWING CITY GUIDE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT IN WAYS THAT REFLECT ITS PRACTICAL CULTURE?

SUMMARY

Fargo has added nearly 40,000 residents since 2000 and has nearly doubled its population and land area since 1980. Much of this growth has been accommodated by new development on the city’s periphery, but progress over the past decade in downtown Fargo has meant a growing focus on investment in established areas—including Fargo’s core neighborhoods, where czb worked in 2020 to develop a core-wide master plan.

In 2023, the City of Fargo turned to czb once again to help the community create a long-range plan for citywide growth—one that effectively guides and shapes growth on the edges while defining the community’s desired balance of new development and redevelopment. Working with a technical committee of staff from City Hall and partner agencies, as well as an Advisory Committee of community stakeholders, czb led a team of engineers, fiscal impact analysts, and coding experts through a process that helped the community decide where and how Fargo should grow in the future.

FARGO GROWTH PLAN, ADOPTED AUGUST 2024 (PDF)

FARGO GROWTH PLAN, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (PDF)

Embracing a "Framework for Practical Growth Management"

The planning process quickly recognized that “practical” is in Fargo’s cultural DNA and that an implementable plan would have to tap into this ethos. The result was a Framework for Practical Growth Management comprised of four growth models that provide clarity about Fargo’s growth expectations.

These models include an urban-rural transect, a system of place types, a growth grid to organize future peripheral development, and an emphasis on absorbing future growth in designated mixed-use growth centers.

Communicating what Fargo says "yes" to

In addition to Fargo’s intrinsic practicality, the planning process also recognized that Fargo has a penchant for politeness and has a hard time saying “no.” Consequently, the plan provides guidance on how to apply the Framework for Practical Growth Management in a manner focuses on what Fargo says “yes” to.

Under the plan’s focus on By-Right Approval, projects that clearly align with the growth plan’s growth models are eligible for streamlined administrative approvals. And under the plan’s focus on Optimal Growth, the use of incentives are reserved for projects that receive By-Right Approval and that go a step further by locating within a strategic geography and providing a public benefit.

Planning to Code

A common shortcoming of long-range plans is that it sometimes takes many years to update zoning and building codes to reflect and help implement the plan’s policy direction. Fargo encountered this after it updated its last growth plan in 2007 and its comprehensive plan in 2013—persisting for several years with good plans but an outdated code.

With that in mind, czb designed the project scope so that the resulting growth plan provides a smooth transition to a code development process—shaving months if not years off of the typical delay between plan adoption and code implementation.