Reference Card
Current zoning rules for Narberth's 4a and 5b districts, what the Planning Commission recommended in February, and what Borough Council's August 20 directives actually send to the Commission to draft
Aongus Flood
changesNarberth BoroughNarberth zoning changesrecodification4a5bparkingMontgomery Avenuereference
1284 |5 Minutes, 50 Seconds
2026-03-31 20:00 -0400
Status. On August 20, 2026, Borough Council issued directives to the Narberth Planning Commission. Those directives supersede Council’s June 18 discussion framework (Revision No. 9) as the live baseline. The Commission took them up on September 14.
The August 20 directives split into two tiers, and the difference matters:
- Directed. Council has told the Commission to discuss these, draft language, and recommend an ordinance. They appear in the third column below.
- Under Council review. Council is still weighing these and has not sent them to the Commission. Several items that appeared in the June 18 framework now sit here. They are listed separately under each district.
Nothing below is adopted. No ordinance text exists yet, and no vote is scheduled.
Timeline in the directives
| Commission discussion | Commission considers recommending an ordinance | |
|---|---|---|
| 5b and borough-wide visitor parking | Sept–Oct 2026 | Nov–Dec 2026 |
| 4a | Dec 2026 – Mar 2027 | Apr–May 2027 |
| Borough-wide rollout of the 4a changes | not set | not set |
Council votes only after the Commission recommends.
District 4a (General Urban Limited)
| Current Code | PC Recommendation (Feb 2026) | Council Directive (Aug 20, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max height | 35 ft. / 3 stories | 35 ft./3 stories by right; 45 ft./4 stories with density bonus (10 ft. sidewalk setback + 10 ft. additional stepback for the bonus story from any adjacent less-dense district) | Not directed. Council did not send any height change to the Commission. It asked the Commission to illustrate how the directed changes would apply to eligible sites, including stacked town houses of up to four stories and apartment buildings, and will consider height after reviewing those illustrations |
| Parking | 1 space per unit | 0.7 spaces per unit, conditioned on SEPTA pass program participation; affordable and sub-750-sf units exempt | Not directed, apart from repeal of the 0.1/unit visitor requirement (borough-wide; added 2021). The per-unit baseline is unchanged by the directives. A package of parking alternatives remains under Council review — see below |
| Apartments | Conditional use, no listed conditions | By right (as it was prior to 2018) | Not directed. By-right apartment buildings are under Council review, tied to the illustrations — see below |
| Rowhouses and cottages | Not permitted | By right; 1,400 sf minimum lot, no minimum width; one-, two-, or three-family use | By right — directed. Minimum lot sizes for cottages, twin houses and row houses are to be reduced, but the directive specifies no figure. The 1,400 sf number comes from PC’s February recommendation and has not been restated by Council |
| Households per building | Varies by building type | Up to three families in a rowhouse (per PC’s rowhouse item) | Up to three families — directed — in a cottage, detached house, twin house or row house. This is broader than PC’s rowhouse-only item |
| Multifamily houses | See current dimensional standards | Not addressed as a standalone item | Directed to reduce minimum lot size and lot width. No figures given |
| Driveways | One-way standards apply | Not addressed | Directed to allow two-way driveways where a pedestrian crosswalk crosses the apron and adequate sight triangles are kept |
Under Council review in 4a, not directed to the Commission
Detached houses by conditional use. A new stacked town house building type buildable to 45 ft., allowing two-family, three-family and multifamily use. Apartment buildings by right for projects meeting the Borough’s green energy standards and providing 10% affordable units, earning a bonus of 10 ft. front and street-side setbacks, 70% impervious cover and 60% building cover — with height held at the current 35 ft. maximum.
Council has said it will consider directing the stacked town house type and the apartment-building bonus only after it reviews the Commission’s illustrations. Readers of the June 18 framework should note that these items have not moved forward with the rest of the package.
District 5b (Montgomery Avenue)
| Current Code | PC Recommendation (Feb 2026) | Council Directive (Aug 20, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max height | 45 ft. / 3 stories | 45 ft./4 stories by right (same envelope, 3-story cap removed); 55 ft./5th story with density bonus, 10 ft. stepback from front and rear façades | Four stories by right in Mixed-Use buildings — directed — within the existing 45 ft. limit. The scope is the mixed-use building type, not the district generally |
| Height bonus | None | 55 ft./5th story with density bonus | 55 ft. and five stories — directed — for Mixed-Use buildings that provide 10% middle-income housing and meet green building standards. “Middle income” is undefined; the directive asks the Commission to confirm its earlier 80% of area median income and to use HUD’s 2026 Philadelphia-area limits |
| Bonus setbacks | n/a | Flat 10 ft. stepback front and rear | Directed: above 45 ft., a 10 ft. stepback from the front façade and 35 ft. from the property line of an adjoining single- or two-family house. An applicant may ask Council to shift that setback further from the houses and toward Montgomery Avenue |
| Buffering and lighting | Current standards | Not addressed | Directed to write stricter buffering and lighting standards where taller buildings adjoin single- or two-family houses in another district |
| Ground-floor residential | Not permitted | See PC recommendations | Directed: housing permitted on the ground floor of Mixed-Use buildings provided the first 12 ft. of depth facing Montgomery Avenue is commercial space |
| Parking | 1 space per unit | 0.7 spaces per unit, conditioned on SEPTA pass program participation | Not directed. The August 20 directives do not address the 5b per-unit baseline. The 0.1/unit visitor requirement is directed for repeal borough-wide |
| Apartments (freestanding) | Conditional use, historic lots only | Not addressed as a standalone item | Not addressed. The ground-floor-residential item above is a different provision and should not be conflated with the freestanding “apartment building, conditional use, historic lots only” rule. That rule remains unresolved in the directives |
| Rowhouses | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Borough-wide
Directed: repeal the 0.1-space-per-unit visitor parking requirement.
Directed for evaluation, no timeline: Council asked the Commission to evaluate applying the 4a package across the whole borough — row houses and cottages by right, reduced minimum lot sizes, three families per building, reduced multifamily lot size and width, a review of dimensional standards, and two-way driveways — together with looser accessory dwelling unit rules. This is an instruction to evaluate, not a decision to adopt.
Under Council review, not directed: a new method for measuring building height, choosing between the main-entrance elevation and the average pre-development elevation of lot lines on public street frontages. Moving driveway standards out of the zoning code and into the SALDO. And three parking changes: crediting non-metered on-street spaces adjoining a site against its parking mandate, allowing mandates to be met with off-street spaces up to 900 ft. away, and a conditional-use route for an alternative parking plan.
Also in front of the Commission
Draft Ordinance No. 1073 is a separate measure on the September 14 agenda. Among other things it sets restaurant and small-restaurant parking at 1.0 space per 500 sq. ft. in the 4a, 4b, 5a and 5b districts, and it deletes the zoning code’s sound-pressure table, replacing the performance standard with a reference to Chapter 366 that applies to manufacturing use. It is a draft and has not been adopted.
This card draws on the memorandum from Assistant Manager Emily Pisano to the Narberth Planning Commission dated September 14, 2026, setting out Borough Council’s August 20, 2026 directives and the Montgomery County Planning Commission’s proposed phasing; the Narberth Planning Commission’s February 2026 Recommendations for Zoning Changes; draft Ordinance No. 1073; and the current Borough of Narberth Zoning Code (Chapter 500). Council’s June 18, 2026 discussion framework (Draft Offered By Michael J. Gaudini, Revision No. 9) has been superseded by the August 20 directives. Nothing here has been adopted and all of it may change. The author is a Narberth resident, not a land-use attorney — this is a plain-language guide, not legal advice.