One of the more interesting council discussions I’ve heard in the last couple of years happened Monday night.
Before the council was a proposal to rezone about 20 acres of land near the city’s power plant on Business Loop 70. The area is surrounded by industrial zoning, yet it is zoned for residential use and contains two historic homes that some want preserved.
The applicant, represented by Sharon Lynch of Landmark Bank, who represents the trusts that own the property, received support from the Planning and Zoning Commission last year. But the Historic Preservation Commission and the Downtown Columbia Leadership Council came out against the rezoning, saying they felt the request was premature. The council, in a 4-3 vote, agreed with the latter two bodies.
Historic Preservation Commission Chairman Brian Treece, speaking Monday night, reiterated his concerns: “I do think (zoning industrial) creates an incentive to destroy those homes.” Lynch said the request would preserve the property.
On Tuesday, I was talking to First Ward Councilman Paul Sturtz about the Planning and Zoning Commission appointments, and he made the comment that it doesn’t really matter who is on the commission if you believe that the government shouldn’t tell people what to do with their property.
Indeed, the two new members of the council indicated that owners should be able to do what they want.
“At what point do we overstep our bounds in what they can do with their property,” Fourth Ward Councilman Daryl Dudley said Monday. Third Ward Councilman Gary Kespohl agreed.
Sturtz said he thought those views were “extreme.”
“I would say most people don’t agree with that,” Sturtz said of Dudley and Kespohl’s opinions. “If they do agree with that, I would like to see them put that to the test on their street, in their neighborhood.”
Zoning laws are, by definition, an agreement that property owners need to get permission to alter their property. During the hearing, Sturtz reiterated that people don’t have the right to do whatever they want with their property.
Dudley said in an interview he voted to approve the owner’s request because the owners wanted it zoned industrial to increase its value “in case something happens.”
“From everything I’ve heard, they will stay there until the end of their days,” Dudley said. “They don’t want to change it. They don’t want to sell it.”
Fifth Ward councilwoman Laura Nauser joined those two in voting to approve the rezoning, but she made it sound like she was more swayed by the applicant’s argument that the higher value from industrial zoning would dissuade MoDOT from acquiring the property through eminent domain.
Most interesting was Mayor Bob McDavid’s stance on the issue. Rather than conveying a no-holds-barred development attitude that one might have assumed based on some of his strongest supporters, he voted against the rezoning. Saying he could “only take them at face value” that there were no plans to change the land, he didn’t see the necessity of rezoning it now.
“If there were an impending sale, if the trust needed revenue and they needed to sell it, I would be receptive that,” he said Monday night.
In an interview, McDavid said he wasn’t so much influenced with the historic nature of the property, he just felt uncomfortable with the open zoning. He said he would have been more comfortable with planned zoning rather than the type requested by the applicant, which allows for just about anything. Most of Columbia’s zoning these days is done on a planned basis, something McDavid noted.
“I just felt there were too many unknowns,” he said.
A personal observation: McDavid’s comment about taking their intent at “face value” could have been mildly tongue-in-cheek — Columbia’s commercial/industrial real estate dealmaker Paul Land sat with with Lynch and left after the hearing with her.
Categories: City Politics, Politics.
