Taylor, MI Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

Section 7.04, Architectural requirements, is the design-review standard for the city's Midtown Taylor MT-1 and MT-2 districts along Goddard Road. Nonresidential and mixed use buildings must front onto the sidewalk with traditional storefront windows and doors, and any building longer than 100 feet needs a usable entrance at least every 50 feet of frontage so the block doesn't read as one blank wall. On the exterior, the ordinance sets a hard materials quota: walls visible from the street or a parking area must be at least 75 percent brick, stone, masonry or other natural material, with up to 25 percent allowed as wood or fiber cement siding; panel brick, bare metal, plastic and mirrored glass are flatly prohibited.

Retail storefronts need clear glass across at least 70 percent of the ground-floor front facade between two and eight feet high, dropping to 50 percent for office or institutional uses, and solid roll-down security gates are banned outright. Roofs default to a flat, parapet-enclosed look with a decorative cornice unless the planning commission approves a pitched alternative, and residential buildings in the same districts must draw on traditional Midwestern styles such as arts and crafts, colonial, Tudor or Victorian. Section 7.04(c) lets the planning commission approve deviations from any of these rules, but only if the design still matches the desired character of the midtown district as articulated in the Midtown Taylor Design Manual, the city's own architectural pattern book, and fits the context of the adjacent block.