Gary, IN Building Setbacks & Zoning: Lot Coverage Limits (2026)

Section 123-155 governs use and bulk standards for Gary's R1 and R1A One-Family Dwelling Districts, the city's base single-family zone. Subsection (g) is a single, direct sentence setting the maximum building coverage on a zoning lot at 40 percent. That figure covers every building on the lot combined, house plus any accessory structures, measured as the ground-floor footprint against total lot area. It works alongside subsection (f), which caps the floor area ratio of all buildings and structures on a zoning lot at 0.5, a separate limit on total finished floor space relative to lot size.

The coverage cap tightens in the city's next tier of single-family zoning: § 123-156(f) sets the R2 Single-Family Dwelling District maximum at 35 percent, and § 123-157(f) carries the same 35 percent cap into the R3 district. Coverage then loosens again moving up the density scale: R4 Two-Family Districts return to 40 percent under § 123-158(g), and R5 Multiple-Family Districts also sit at 40 percent under § 123-159(f). Detached accessory buildings, such as garages and sheds, are governed by a separate rule at § 123-332(b): they cannot occupy more than 40 percent of the area of a required rear yard and cannot exceed 15 feet in height when located in that rear yard, a distinct calculation from the whole-lot coverage percentage in § 123-155(g).