By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Village officials have approved a major overhaul of the sections of the village code concerned with zoning.

The work on the code, Development and Planning Office Director Fred Hanss said, was an effort to “update and modernize” the code’s language.

The revisions include things such as renaming the B1 “Central Overlay” downtown district the “Central Business District,” and clarifying definitions for things such as installations of solar panels and satellite dish antennas.

One new designation is a broadened definition for the parts of the old downtown Clarkson campus between Elm and Main streets that are undergoing redevelopment. Now dubbed an “innovation zone,” approved uses would include the fostering of education, entrepreneurship and new technologies as standard uses, and special uses requiring extra review such as multiple dwellings, light industry, a café, and artists’ studios, among other possible uses.

An area behind the development of medical facilities on Lawrence Avenue across from the elementary school has been redesignated hospital “H-1” from residential “R-2.”

Hanss said work by him, Cindy Vivlamore of his office, and Greg Thompson, former code enforcement officer and now village administrator, took the better part of a year.

The revisions took up 27 pages of the Monday meeting’s agenda.

The changes were adopted by a unanimous vote at the Board of Trustees meeting Monday.