(a) Street Trees. All lots shall provide a minimum of two parkway shade trees for every fifty feet of lot frontage. The additional required tree may be of an alternative species as deemed appropriate under this chapter.
(b) Buffering. Where a development abuts a more intensive land use, including residential, business, or manufacturing districts, parking lots, railways, or arterial streets, a minimum twenty-foot buffering strip shall be required to reduce the negative impacts of the adjacent development. This buffer may be achieved using a variety of arrangements, including parallel, serpentine, or broken planting rows, or any combination thereof.
Buffering materials shall be designed to provide a year-round visual and acoustic screen of at least four feet in height in three growing seasons. Buffering shall provide at least seventy percent open space so as not to restrict the flow of water. Openings in buffering materials shall be provided along dedicated easements and rights of way and where necessary to provide emergency vehicle access.
(c) Ground Cover. All lot areas not covered by site improvements or required buffering, trees, bushes, or other vegetation shall be covered using sod, seed, hydro-seed or some combination thereof.
(1) New development. All new development shall be required to sod the front and side yards of the lot prior to occupancy. The side and rear yards shall be seeded and/or hydro-seeded so as to produce complete coverage during the next growing season.
Should it not be feasible to sod the front and side yards prior to occupancy due to the time of year and/or climactic conditions, the developer shall post a security bond equal to two thousand dollars ($2,000) or 110 percent of the improvement to guarantee that the ground cover will be planted at the beginning of the next growing season.
(2) Existing development. Where ground cover is removed, destroyed, or dies for any reason, the property owner shall replace said ground cover using one or a combination of the methods described above.
(d) Parking Lot Landscaping. A minimum of twenty percent of the interior parking of nonresidential uses shall be reserved for landscape plantings, including, but not limited to, parking islands, hedges, berms, rocks, ground cover, and trees. One interior parking area shade tree shall be planted for every fifteen parking spaces. Interior shade tree requirements are in addition to the required number of street and parkway trees.
(1) Location. (Same as business districts)
(2) Plant type. (Same as business districts)
(e) Paving Materials. (Same as business districts)
(f) Privacy Walls and Fences. (Same as business districts)
(g) Street Furniture/Ornamentation. (Same as business districts)
1. Design. (Same as business districts)
(Ord. 940. Passed 4-14-97.)