“We’re hearing more complaints that we’re approving too much storage."”

City Administrator Matt Wolf

PRESCOTT – The Prescott Plan Commission continued its review of city zoning codes at its meeting last Monday.

Commissioners met for 1.5 hours with Bob Colson of Cedar Corp. The city commissioned the review of its zoning code in June 2022 at a cost of $17,850. At that time, the Prescott City Council was considering a change to its Highway Commercial Zoning District that would have reclassified some of the current uses within the zoning district, such as manufacturing and mobile homes, vehicle and equipment sales and service establishments, warehousing, wholesaling and storage establishments.

The plan commission had approved those changes, and the council approved it in a first reading. However, complaints from the businesses caused the council to send the matter back to committee. At the ordinance committee, it was decided that the whole zoning code should be reviewed.

Those items that were controversial at that time were on the table at the recent plan commission meeting.

“The things we will be discussing probably are going to be the most controversial of proposed changes to be made,” City Administrator Matt Wolf said at the onset of the meeting. “Those ended up making it to the council. A number of letters were sent to businesses, and they did not like those changes. We decided instead of just looking at Highway Commercial, we want to look at the whole entire zoning chapter. The changes we’re proposing tonight are the same as before.”

That doesn’t mean that businesses along the highway corridor need to adhere to the new code. But if they make changes to their business or expand, they would need to apply for a conditional use permit, and a hearing is held.

Things like storage and warehousing wouldn’t be allowed as a standard use.

“We’re hearing more complaints that we’re approving too much storage,” said Wolf.

The St. Croix Terrace mobile home development would become a nonconforming use as well.

“The mobile home park that has a bunch of stuff that’s parked out front, they hauled in another mobile home. Is that something we want to keep as a use that will allow that happening,” Wolf said. “It would move it to conditional use.”

He said that a used car dealership near First National Bank would be a nonconforming use.

“That property came in as used vehicle sales. We pretty much have to say you can go in that property,” Wolf said. “Those were the general overview, warehousing, wholesaling and storage don’t drive traffic in and out of commercial. That was the idea behind those changes. It’s what kicked off this. The idea would be we already brought this once to plan commission and council, and it was kicked back. We expect again there will be a large amount of pushback again.”

Wolf was asked why there was pushback.

“Some of them felt it was putting undue regulations on them,” he said. “If you’re Cernohous Chevrolet, their business establishment would fall under conditional use (if they were to expand). Of course, we don’t have any issues with Cernohous whatsoever. Because of the other properties we do have issues with, all of those would have to fall under this.”

He stressed that under the proposal, they aren’t forced to change.

“The city doesn’t have the right to say, ‘You have to change this.’ Everybody gets to continue operating as they are. They’d be a legal nonconforming use. If they continue to operate their business as is, they can operate indefinitely,” said Wolf.

Plan commissioner member David Hovel explained it like this: “We want more control of what goes in there.”

Wolf said the argument can be made that the two Victory Fireworks buildings are mainly for storage use.

“The two buildings could be seen as primarily storage, because they’re only open such a small portion of the year,” he said.

The plan commission also suggested that commercial and industrial buildings should have architectural standards.

“There have been people who have stated we would like something nicer than some of the buildings we see,” said Wolf.

“It’s not a bad idea,” plan commissioner Josh Gergen said.

It was suggested that architectural standards be worked into the zoning code for commercial, industrial and high-density residential developments.

The plan commission has at least one more review of other chapters of the zoning code, and then the new code will be packaged and presented for any further revisions. After that, a public hearing will be scheduled prior to plan commission and city council passage of the new codes.