After 16 months of planning and community input, the final plans to create new zoning regulations and requirements for the Buckhead Village will be submitted to the city by the end of the month.

The plan, labeled Special Public Interest 9, began as an update to the current overlay district which supplements the current zoning regulations for the area.

The project’s manager, Denise Starling, executive director of the Buckhead Area Transportation Management Authority (BATMA), said after consulting with city officials in October the project’s committee decided to compress the overlay district and the zoning regulations together into one plan.

“We were originally just modifying the overlay district, but the city asked us to collapse it all together and make it all in the zoning so the property owner doesn’t have to go to two different documents to find what the real requirements are,” said Ms. Starling.

The shift resulted in a revised version of the plan updated Nov. 19.

“It’s a little bit different than we initially were starting off to do, but quite honestly, everything ended up being a lot better because of it,” she said.

The new plan includes what Starling calls two “cutting edge” principles that will help the direction of the Buckhead Village’s development.

The first is density bonuses that will grant property owners incremental increases in allowed density for meeting extra requirements such as gaining LEED certification, installing public art or building a childcare facility.

The second is the transfer of development rights which will allow properties that are allotted higher density but do not fulfill the maximum to sell its “excess” density to properties with lower densities.

“That allows us to really balance out what’s in the village because right now all the high density is right on the Peachtree [Road] corridor and then everything else is like a big cavern,” Ms. Starling said.

Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID), said his organization, which has partnered with BATMA on the project, is excited about it wrapping up.

“We are planning now how the Buckhead CID can best invest in new streetscapes in the village,” he said.

The final public input meeting is tentatively scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Buckhead, but the date and time will officially be confirmed on the CID’s Web site this week.

After the meeting, the project committee will make final revisions and submit the plan to the city, where it will wait to go before the Atlanta City Council in February or March.