Imagine Home Depot without the orange, or Wal-Mart without the blue.

Those possibilities could become reality under a proposed new policy approved late Wednesday by the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission.

The commission added a “design standards” policy to revisions to the commercial chapter of Horizon 2020, the city-county comprehensive plan. That chapter governs rules by which developers design and build new stores in Lawrence.

“The objective will be to work with commercial developers to achieve ‘village plazas’ versus the conventional strip malls,” Planning Commissioner Myles Schachter wrote in the policy, which he proposed.

He said the standards should “improve community aesthetics, encourage more shopping per trip, facilitate neighborhood identification … and make shopping an event to be enjoyed.”

Planning commissioners unanimously agreed to the design policy Wednesday, though they split on approval of the overall revisions.

The commercial chapter revisions won’t be adopted without approval of the City Commission. At least one commissioner welcomed the design standards.

“Amen,” Mayor David Dunfield said Thursday upon hearing of the proposal. “Sounds good.”

Lawrence developer Bill Newsome, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, took a wait-and-see approach to the idea.

¢ 6News video: Douglas County Planning Commission adopts policy about commercial design¢ Memo on commercial development policy changes¢ See other proposed revisions to the Commercial Chapter of Horizon 2020

“As a concept, I’m not opposed to it,” Newsome said. “I think it’s a classic concept of the proof is in the pudding.”

The commercial chapter of Horizon 2020 tells developers where new stores can go and how big they can be. While city policies do govern some aesthetic principles — how much green space a development should have, for example — there are few mandates in designing a store’s appearance.

Officials say design standards are hardly unusual. They point to Olathe as a nearby example. Cities on the East Coast, they said, regularly force major retail chains to alter their building designs to look like the rest of the community.

“It allows the city to have development occur in a fashion that’s unique to the city, that fits the city, rather than fit the corporate entity, whatever it might be,” said Bryan Dyer, the city’s long-range planner.

The policy does not say what Lawrence’s standards should be, except to direct that new commercial centers should be integrated into local neighborhoods and accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Dyer said the city took about a year to develop the Downtown Design Guidelines, which mandate that new and renovated construction in and around Massachusetts Street conform to the historic look of the area.

A similar process, including the public, city officials and developers, probably would be used to create the new standards.

“It can be a pretty touchy issue,” Dunfield said, “but it’s certainly not a place where we would be breaking new ground.”

The Lawrence City Commission should receive the proposed revisions to Horizon 2020 in mid-June.