About Us
We're on a mission...
…to provide the most user-friendly, legally defensible and precisely calibrated development regulations necessary to achieve our client’s plans and meet their unique needs.
Passionate About Ordinances
We really like marrying technical writing with graphic design to craft regulations that implement plans, reduce load on planning staff, and are easy for citizens to understand.
Emphatic About Learning
It take an enormous amount of research and tracking to understand the implications of case law, new legislation, changes to federal acts, and best practices. Therefore, we've chosen to be singly dedicated to the craft of ordinance preparation.
Results Driven
When we get compliments from elected officials as well as builders and developers, we know we're doing something right.
Founded
Ground Rules, Inc. was founded in 2001 in Indianapolis, Indiana by Bradley Johnson, AICP as a specialized consulting practice, specifically focused on preparing zoning ordinances, subdivision control ordinances, and stand-alone development regulations for cities, towns, and counties. For a period of time the firm broadened its services to include comprehensive planning, small area plans, economic development, redevelopment, and downtown revitalization; but we’ve gravitated back to our roots over recent years. This reversion is exclusively due to the fact that ordinance preparation is profoundly complex and needs every bit of our attention to maintain and improve our proficiency.
Adapting to Unique Situations
One compliment we often get is in regard to our ability to adapt to each of our client’s unique values, history, and characteristics. For instance, we successfully adopted a zoning ordinance in a community that previously never had zoning. You can imagine the challenge in introducing property-rights impacting regulations on a population that formerly hadn’t had such oversight.
Diverse Clientele
Ground Rules has provided meaningful assistance to:
- Affluent suburbs to impoverished small towns;
- Towns losing population to rapidly growing counties;
- Culturally diverse communities, including communities with Amish, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Maori, and Aboriginal populations;
- Communities that value a rural lifestyle to cities that appreciate dense urban living;
- Both conservative and liberal places;
- Lake communities and college towns; and
- New towns and historic cities.