Letter to Editor: Protecting What Makes Easton, Easton

Easton’s Comprehensive Plan Has Vision — Now It Needs the Right Tool.

Easton’s character is not an accident. It comes from generations of choices—homes built close to the street, walkable blocks, human-scaled buildings, and neighborhoods shaped by people who cared about how this town grew.

Now, with the release of the 2025 Comprehensive Plan Public Hearing Draft, Easton has a rare opportunity to shape its next chapter. The draft plan contains many promising ideas: walkable streets, better bike connections, traditional neighborhood patterns, safer public spaces, and redevelopment that feels more like historic Easton and less like suburban sprawl. For this, the Town deserves real credit.

But an important piece is missing—the tool that makes all these good ideas happen. That tool is Form-Based Zoning, and without it, the Comprehensive Plan’s vision will remain more aspirational than achievable.

What the Draft Plan Gets Right

The draft plan recognizes that Easton must move beyond outdated, use-based zoning (Euclidean zoning)—rules written decades ago that focus on what a building is used for instead of what it looks like or how it shapes a neighborhood. The plan introduces new ‘Place Types,’ which are basically neighborhood character zones describing the scale and style of development appropriate to each part of Easton. It emphasizes Traditional Neighborhood Development and calls for design principles that reflect Easton’s historic character.

The plan already leans heavily in a form-based direction.
It just stops short of saying the words needed to make very clear what the desired outcomes would be.

Why This Matters

Use-based zoning is the reason Easton residents routinely find themselves fighting off substandard, out-of-scale projects that “fit the zoning” on paper but do not fit the neighborhood. It doesn’t matter what the community wants or what the Comprehensive Plan says—if a project technically meets the outdated use table, it gets to move forward.

Meanwhile, residents are left spending hours attending hearings, studying site plans, organizing opposition, and defending their property rights. In a rapidly growing town, this is simply not sustainable, nor fair to the residents.Form-Based Zoning flips this dynamic.

Instead of relying on abstract use tables, it focuses on how we experience the world — visually and in three dimensions. It regulates what people see and feel on a street: the height of a building, how it sits on the lot, the shape of the roofline, the presence of porches or windows, and how a building meets the sidewalk. These standards are illustrated and easy to understand, which reduces conflict, speeds up approval for good projects, and stops out-of-place buildings before they gain momentum.

A Tool That Protects Both Neighborhoods and Investment

Form-Based Zoning is not anti-development. In fact, it makes development easier—for the right projects.

Developers get:

Clear expectations
A streamlined process
Faster approvals when they follow the code
Lower design costs
A level playing field that favors good local builders

Residents get:

Projects that look like Easton
Early, predictable review
A reduced need for neighborhood conflicts
Confidence that growth will respect community character

The Town gets:

Less conflict
Better-quality projects
Plans that match outcomes
A stronger tax base created by walkable, traditional neighborhood design
Other Towns Have Already Done This Successfully

Form-based zoning is not experimental. Communities in Maryland and around the country are adopting it. Frederick, MD, Beaufort, SC and Nashville, TN to name a few.

These towns show that form-based zoning both protects neighborhoods and provides certainty for developers. Easton would be joining an established national movement—not inventing something new

Why the Comprehensive Plan Needs to Say It Out Loud

The Comprehensive Plan is the document that sets Easton’s direction for the next 10 years. If the Town truly wants:

Traditional neighborhood form
Walkable streets
Historic character
Mixed-use corridors
Better infill
Safer streets
Fiscal sustainability

Then it must include an explicit commitment to adopt Form-Based Zoning.

Otherwise, we will continue to see plans that look great on paper but never materialize—or worse, neighborhoods that slowly lose their character one incompatible project at a time.

A Simple Request

Easton’s residents are not asking for anything radical. We are simply asking that the Comprehensive Plan include a clear statement like this:

“The Town will adopt a form-based zoning code, aligned with the Plan’s Place Types, within two years of Comprehensive Plan adoption.”

This would finally give Easton the regulatory tools to build the future we want, without losing the character we already have.

Easton is at a turning point. Our neighborhoods, our history, and our shared identity deserve a plan that not only looks forward but also protects the town we love. Form-Based Zoning is how we get there.

Let’s seize this moment. Let’s grow—without giving up what makes Easton, Easton.

Jay Corvan
Greg Zimmerman
Talbot County

A Planning Commission Public Hearing on the Easton Comprehensive Plan Draft will be held:

Tuesday, December 9, town hall at 6PM

Both the Comprehensive Plan Draft and the East End Small Area Plan are available at:
www.engage.eastonmd.gov