Barrow County, GA Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

Article XV of the Unified Development Code creates the Destination 211 Overlay (D211), a mapped design district covering unincorporated land along Highway 211 NE, Highway 124 and several connecting roads near the City of Braselton, adopted in 2025 to steer the county's growing tourism corridor toward a walkable, mixed-use pattern rather than typical highway commercial strip development. Section 89-1518 sets the overlay's streetscape design and building orientation rules: Highway 211 NE must meet Type A Road Standards and all other new roads must meet Type B Road Standards, both requiring buildings placed within 20 feet of the required sidewalk, surface parking lots pushed behind or beside buildings rather than fronting the street, and a planted strip with street trees spaced no more than 40 feet apart and streetlights every 50 feet. Driveways along Type A and Type B roads must stay at least 275 feet apart, and every sidewalk must hold a cross slope of three percent or less.

The overlay layers on architectural standards found nowhere else in the county's Development Code. Section 89-1522 requires new residential buildings to be built in one of six historic styles (Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival or Folk Victorian), limits exterior walls to three materials, and bans vinyl or aluminum siding and synthetic stone veneer outright. Section 89-1523 requires flat-roofed commercial and mixed-use storefronts to provide glass display windows covering at least 75 percent of the ground-floor street facade, an eight-foot minimum window height, and a cornice, sign band and glass transom stacked above the entrance, with other street-facing doors required to be "of a character that matches the surrounding downtown area."