Amarillo, TX Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

The Downtown Urban Design District covers the historic core bounded roughly by Washington Street, SW 11th Avenue, Adams Street, the BNSF rail corridor, and Interstate 40, layered as a zoning overlay on top of each property's base zoning (Sec. 4-10-120). Inside that boundary, Sec. 4-10-121 adopts the Downtown Urban Design Standards as Appendix XXI(B) to the zoning ordinance, and where the Standards conflict with the Division's text, the Standards control. Sec. 4-10-122 makes a certificate of appropriateness a prerequisite for any building permit covering new construction, an addition, or an exterior alteration other than painting, including work on parking lots or public right-of-way areas open to the public.

Two review tracks exist. The Planning Director or a designee can approve signage, landscaping, sidewalk work, minor exterior modifications, temporary construction facilities, and in-kind restoration of historic buildings. Everything else, including all new construction and any major modification (exceeding fifty percent of the building's tax-roll value with a project cost of $50,000 or more), goes to the Downtown Design Review Board. Applicants must attend a pre-design conference and submit a site plan, landscape plan, and building elevations under Secs. 4-10-123 and 4-10-124, and neither reviewer may reject a project for missing a preference rather than a required Standard (Sec.

4-10-125). A certificate expires one year after approval. Denials by the Planning Director may be appealed to the Design Review Board within ten days (Sec. 4-10-126(a)); Board decisions go next to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, and from there an aggrieved owner may sue in district court.