Ask an Auburn short-term rental investor where the eligible zones sit, and most will pull up the city's interactive map and point to the same handful of districts near campus. Ask them whether that map can grow without a public vote on short-term rentals at all, and the answer gets less certain. It can. It just did.
As reported by The Auburn Plainsman, the Auburn City Council approved the development plan, pre-zoning, and annexation ordinances for The Foundry at North College on March 3, 2026, a roughly 282-acre project that will become the first large Planned Unit Development in the city's history. The land runs between North College Street, Shug Jordan Parkway, and North Donahue Drive, north of Hickory Dickory Park and west of the Publix on E. University Drive. Nobody voted on short-term rental policy that night. But two of the annexed parcels, including 76.97 acres from the Owens Family Partnership and 50 acres from The Auburn Place LLC, were pre-zoned into a classification called Comprehensive Development District, or CDD. According to the city's own short-term rental FAQ, CDD is already one of the zoning districts where non-primary short-term rentals are permitted.
That is the mechanism worth understanding before you compare Auburn neighborhoods for rental potential. The eligible-zone list isn't fixed to the neighborhoods that exist today. It moves whenever raw land gets annexed and assigned a zoning class, and the newest several hundred acres in the city happened to land on the allowed side of that list.
How the eligible list actually reads
Auburn's ordinance splits short-term rentals into two types. A homestay is a permanent residence where the owner rents out part or all of the home while still living there. A non-primary rental is a separate unit, not the owner's residence, rented out entirely. Homestays are allowed citywide except in Industrial and South College Corridor districts, which aren't residential to begin with. Non-primary rentals are the stricter category, and the city limits them to zones that already permit up to five unrelated occupants per household.
Per the city's short-term rental FAQ, those zones are:
| Eligible for non-primary short-term rentals | Not eligible |
|---|---|
| Urban Core | Neighborhood Conservation (NC) |
| Urban Neighborhoods, East, West, and South | Industrial |
| Comprehensive Development District (CDD) | South College Corridor |
| Redevelopment District | |
| Medium Density Redevelopment District | |
| Corridor Redevelopment District, East, South, Urban, and West (east of N. Donahue Drive) | |
| Neighborhood Redevelopment District (east of N. Donahue Drive) | |
| Rural |
Every non-primary rental in an eligible zone still operates under real limits: a 240-day annual cap, a zoning certificate that runs January through December, a business license, a safety inspection, and a two-strike complaint system that can pull the license for the remainder of the year plus the following year. None of that changes because a property sits in a new development. What changes is whether the property qualifies to apply at all, and CDD already clears that first hurdle.
What gets built, and when
The Foundry's master plan divides the site into areas with different uses. Area 1, off Shug Jordan Parkway, is planned as largely commercial. Area 2 blends commercial and residential. Areas 3 and 4 are predominantly residential, and those are the parcels carrying the CDD zoning that intersects with the STR-eligible list. Ward 3 Council Member Beth Witten, who introduced the amendments the council adopted that night, framed the project's purpose in terms of daily convenience for the north side of town.
As reported by The Auburn Plainsman, she said, "I'm in support of the project. I think this is a great opportunity for not only Auburn but specifically the north side of Auburn."
Reporting from The Opelika Observer described the project as expected to include hundreds of apartments and single-family homes, more than 200,000 square feet of retail and office space, and an estimated 115 acres of green space. The Auburn Plainsman reported the timeline directly from the council meeting: the project is planned to finish within 15 to 20 years. This is not a subdivision that delivers its first closings next spring. It's a multi-decade build-out, and the residential inventory that would actually carry STR eligibility sits in the later phases, not the first ones breaking ground.
The city is already moving on the infrastructure side. Auburn is partnering with developer Warren Jolly on an extension of Yarborough Farms Boulevard, a nearly $8 million project intended to pull traffic off North College Street and North Donahue Drive before the new corridor adds residents. Planning Director Justice Wahid Cotton described the goal as easing pressure for people commuting to the new high school and into the development itself. That same March meeting, which finalized The Foundry's zoning, also handled routine business like utility easements for the Duck Samford baseball concession stands, a reminder that big land-use decisions in Auburn tend to move through the same unglamorous council agenda as everything else.
The part that isn't a green light yet
Pre-zoning a parcel as CDD is not the same as a short-term rental permit sitting on the table. Nothing about the March approval fast-tracks anyone's application. A future owner in Area 3 or 4 would still need to confirm the specific parcel's zoning through the city's mapping tools, apply for the correct permit type, pass a safety inspection, and stay under the 240-day cap like every other non-primary rental in the city. The council's own back-and-forth on this project shows how much can still shift before ground is broken. An earlier version of the master plan, discussed at a January and February 2026 meeting the council postponed twice, described the residential program as 635 multi-family apartments and 1,800 additional residential units across roughly 120 acres. By the time the project returned in March with the full 282-acre scope and public infrastructure commitments, some of those use permissions had been changed from conditional to permitted specifically to give the developer more flexibility in where units land. City Manager Megan Crouch also flagged that portions of North College Street and Shug Jordan Parkway are state-owned roads, not city property, which is part of why the traffic planning has moved in parallel with the zoning rather than after it.
None of that erases the underlying fact. It just means the zoning is a real, dated, and verifiable starting point rather than a finished product.
What this means if you're weighing Auburn neighborhoods for a rental property
If you've been watching Auburn's existing short-term rental inventory, you already know the map close to campus is tight. Neighborhood Conservation zones exclude non-primary rentals outright, and the city's authority to draw that line has already been tested and upheld, according to STR Profit Map. That scarcity is real and it isn't going away in established neighborhoods.
What's different about The Foundry is that it's the first time in years that new acreage, rather than an existing neighborhood, has been assigned a zoning class that already sits on the eligible side of the ordinance. That doesn't make it a shortcut. It makes it a corridor worth tracking as phases deliver, the same way you'd track any pre-construction inventory: by confirming the parcel-level zoning yourself before assuming eligibility, and by pricing in a build-out measured in decades rather than quarters.
FAQ
Does CDD zoning guarantee a short-term rental permit? No. CDD zoning means a property is in an eligible district. The owner still has to apply for the correct permit type, pass inspection, and stay within the operating rules, the same as anywhere else in the city.
When will homes actually be available to buy in The Foundry? The council has described the full build-out as a 15 to 20 year project, with commercial development in Area 1 expected first and the predominantly residential Areas 3 and 4 following in later phases.
Could the city change the short-term rental ordinance again before this land is built out? It's possible. The City of Auburn says its current zoning ordinance took effect December 2, 2025, and the ordinance has been revised before. Anyone planning around STR eligibility years out should check the city's current map and ordinance at the time they're ready to buy, not rely on today's rules alone.
If you're trying to figure out what a zoning line like this actually means for a specific property, or how a multi-phase project like The Foundry fits into a short-term rental plan, Carter Pair can walk through the current map with you before you write an offer.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
