This past week the council voted on a parcel that has had a lot of intereston from to public on the agenda; a rezone request from Agriculture to Commercial Highway. Want the short version? Skip to the bottom. 🙂
A public hearing on this parcel to hear from the public was done at the planning commission level in June. There were no comments about this item and the PC recommended unanimously to the council for approval. This also passed the council unanimously. You can watch this agenda item unfold for both the planning commission and city council on our YouTube channel. I will link them below.
Alright, let’s dive in. As I stated this passed the council with a favorable vote, which of course means I voted yes. Here’s why:
•this property received an overwhelming support during the general plan feedback to be commercial Highway. The developer has approached the council and planning commission numerous times in the past, each time with a High density residential component. Each of these presentations failed because of the desires of the community to not have more HDH developments and mixed use. The developer decided to come back and ask for exactly what we were projecting it to be, commercial highway. This is in line with the general plan and also in line with the feedback of the general plan survey. I know because I had just read all 4,500 comments again just a few months earlier.
•Another item of note was the uses within our CH zone. During the survey of the general plan, we realized a lot of the uses we allowed did not conform to the desires of the residents. Thus the code committee immediately got to work and revamped all the uses. The general plan feedback was highly considered and utilized while updating to better align with what the citizens would like by way of commercial. When we were finished, the uses went before the Planning Commission for a public hearing to get further from the public with how we did. The planning commission recommended the updated uses to the city council who passed the ordinance change unanimously. Why does this matter? Because at the time we were allowing a lot of uses we soon realized the public did not want; truck stops, RV parks and such. Better aligning our code with the desires of the community meant that we would attract only what we want and would not have our hands tied to accept something we didn’t want. As a member of the code committee, I felt we worked hard to use the feedback from the citizens to shape our new uses. The public feedback we did receive mostly included to remove a truck stop to which we had already done.
•Some caveats:
This did not come forward with a concept plan as the developer is hoping the zoning being CH will allow for more committtment. Having come to the table in the past and unable to proceed forward created a loss of confidence from potential buyers. Because of this, the developer does not have a presentation at this time, but will be allowed the uses within the zone and will be required to meet all the standards of the zone.
•This area is set to be master planned. In a previous meeting I stated that I wanted to have a code for master planning completed so that when these properties come to us (those that have hatch marks on the general plan) we can have greater control with what comes to that area and other upgrades or things they need to do to create a uniform and complete feel. While this idea was not denied, it also did not receive a lot of support. The code committee has been overwhelmed at many other projects that also need to be addressed ASAP and the priority of developing a code for master planning has been moved to work on other very needed items. However, codifying a master plan arrangement still remains a high priority for me and I will work hard to make sure it is given the attention it needs as soon as we are feasibly able.
•Too long/didn’t read (TLDR): In summary, I voted yes to this rezone because I felt it followed the general plan and because we had updated our uses to better align with the vision of the citizens. The public was given the ability and time to review this revisions and were updated just in time before this development came before us (phew!). Because of this, I favored this rezone request, but still believe more work is needed within our code to guarantee the best development for this property.
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