home

Oriental’s Town Board holds a public hearing Tuesday night on whether to adopt “Conditional Zoning”.

Conditional Zoning would let developers set up businesses in residential neighborhoods which now don’t allow such use. Conditional Zoning also offers a loophole to the town’s regulations on condos and townhomes.

This could happen on any lot in town. It could happen on your street after Tuesday night.

We wrote here earlier this spring about the genesis of this idea — to find a way to allow assisted living at St. Peter’s Catholic Church if that property were annexed in to the town. Zoning it R3 and allowing assisted living in the R3 zone remains the cleanest way to accomplish this. Covering the entire town in the heavy cloak of Conditional Zoning seemed rash the first time it was brought up. It still does.

What We Have Now

If you look at Oriental’s zoning map, the red bits and orange bits are the Mixed Use districts (MU is red, MU1 is orange). If you have property zoned MU or MU1 you may put your land to residential or commercial use, or both. People who buy homes in those zones know that there’s the possibility of a business opening next door,or a more densely packed condo than is allowed elsewhere in Oriental (with multiple units on as little as 5,000 square feet of land.) That’s what is allowed. It is spelled out in the GMO.

A 2007 map showing Oriental’s various zoning districts. Under conditional zoning, the colors won’t matter. Uses that now happen only in the commercial red and orange districts, will be able to happen anywhere in town.

Look again to the map and those yellow, green and purple areas. Those are the R1, R2 and R3 residential neighborhoods where, at least for now, residents have the assurance that their neighborhoods will remain residential. Those R1, R2 and R3 neighborhoods have more restrictions on condo building than do the MU neighborhoods. For instance, In the R2, nothing bigger than a duplex may be built on a 10,000 square foot lot. And in the R1 neighborhoods no multi-unit construction may happen at all.

But with Conditional Zoning, nothing is certain. Every neighborhood in Oriental could see the level of use that is now allowed only in the MU and MU1. All of Oriental could, in effect, become MU.

A developer with a lot in a residential neighborhood could tell the town, “I realize that this lot is in the R1, and no restaurants are allowed here. But I’d like to set up a restaurant.” Under the Conditional Zoning, the town board could say, “Okay, we’ll conditionally zone your lot MU, under the condition that it only be used as a restaurant and no other business use.”

Similarly, a developer could approach the town and say, “I’d like to put in more townhomes than the R2 regulations allow.” Under Conditional Zoning, the town board could decide to let him do that.

This will make our current zoning meaningless. So why is the town considering this?

The Planning Board members and Mayor Bill Sage argue that this kind of “flexibility” is needed for growth in town in the future. Conditional zoning, they promise, would only be used for projects that are good for town. The example that the Planning Board offers up for discussion is “an ice cream shop”.

Nice, a seemingly un-threatening example. But the truth is that Conditional Zoning could also bring a host of other businesses to residential neighborhoods. A restaurant, open late in to the night. A retail store, with cars pulling in to and out of a parking lot all day. Anywhere in town.

Here’s an important question to those who say that this is needed to bring projects that are good for town. What projects are they? What structures couldn’t be built now, what businesses couldn’t be set up, under our current zoning arrangement, that could be set up if we had Conditional Zoning?

That question was asked of the Planning Board during its May meeting. It was asked at least three times. The question was never answered. Not one example was given.

———-
The danger is that even without a demonstrated need for this, Conditional Zoning could become our town’s law after Tuesday night. That property next door, across the street, a block over, that you thought would always be residential because that was what it was zoned … could now become anything.

Some Town Board commissioners are not persuaded of the need for this. But not enough yet to turn down the idea. One commissioner, Nancy Inger, said at a Town Board meeting this spring that she welcomed “constructive” comments on the subject. If you have one, this is the time to give it, even before the Public Hearing on Tuesday. (Email addresses are at the bottom of this column.)

——-

While no one on the Planning Board could or would answer the question above, they instead offered rationales for Conditional Zoning. Here are three of them:

1. The Olde Ice Cream Shoppe/The Olde Scalpel The Mayor and planning board say that with Conditional Zoning, the town could rezone a lot in a residential neighborhood and stipulate that only a particular use — they like to say “an ice cream shop” — and no other kind of business can be set up in that residential neighborhood.

Mayor Bill Sage likened Conditional Zoning to “a scalpel,” as compared to the “blunt instrument” of our current system. Planning Board chair Paul Olson and Planning Board member Ron Stevens applauded the mayor’s phrasing.

If this medical analogy is going to be used, shouldn’t we take it to the next level and ask the important question: Is this surgery really necessary?

It is not. There is no indication that the patient is sick or even has a sniffle. Oriental’s Town Board gets very few rezoning requests. One noted exception was the rezoning request a few years ago in the Old Village – it was on Neuse Street across from the current mayor’s home. The land owner wanted to convert from residential to commercial/residential. The town board said, “no”.

The Town Board didn’t use the “blunt instrument” of rezoning in that case. It did something simpler and cleaner. It just said no.

Imposing Conditional Zoning on our town would be akin to subjecting it to unnecessary surgery and the risks that go with it: That “scalpel” will be used to cut out the muscle of our zoning laws and districts. Then the patient surely will be ill.

2. Zoning Is Rigid/People Want to Bicycle

At that May meeting Planning Board member Bob Miller said that “one of the problems of zoning is that it can be so rigid,” and “not allow things to happen that might be good for the community.” Zoning, Miller said, leads to less economic diversity in neighborhoods. He noted in particular the lack of more affordable housing at Dolphin Point.

Miller touted Conditional Zoning as a way to create neighborhoods where businesses were mixed in with residences and where people didn’t have to get in to a car to go to a strip mall to shop.

That’s an idyllic scene. Who can be against a community that is more bikeable and walkable?

Thing is, we already have that in much of Oriental. In the town’s MU and MU1 areas, along Broad, Hodges, and Midyette Streets, residential and commercial uses are already mixed. And in the nearby residential neighborhoods of the Old Village and main part of Oriental, all that lovely mix of commercial and residential is just a few blocks walk or a bike ride away.

We don’t need Conditional Zoning to get us out of our cars. We are on two feet and two wheels already.

If an even more bikeable and walkable town is really the Planning Commissioner’s goal here, why not put more energy behind a bike path to connect the White Farm Road/Dolphin Point area to the main part of town? That would do far more — for town, for people’s health, for sensible growth — than wielding the ‘scalpel’ of Conditional Zoning in the Old Village neighborhoods.

3. If We’d Had Conditional Zoning Before…
Mayor Sage said that if Oriental had had Conditional Zoning when it first set up the zoning districts in the 1990’s, the marinas — those islands of red surrounded by yellow residential neighborhoods on the map — could have been zoned R1, but with the one conditional MU use as a marina/boatyard. If that had been the case, the mayor said, the Whittaker Creek condo controversy of the past two years wouldn’t have arisen because the land there could only have been used for a marina. Neighbors wouldn’t have had to deal with the prospect of a condo stack in their neighborhood.

That’s a fun fact and folksy walk down memory lane, but ultimately irrelevant. Putting Conditional Zoning in to place now, will not remove the MU zoning for Whittaker Creek (or the other boatyards and marinas.) They can still be converted to condos – or any other business use — someday. In terms of MU zoning, that horse has left that barn. And far from helping catch that horse, Conditional Zoning could start a stampede of developers seeking to change the nearby waterfront R1 and R2 neighborhoods in to the equivalent of Mixed Use ones. More condos. Businesses that could shake the quiet of the residential street. Whoa… why are we even thinking of doing this?

“Why?”

Conditional Zoning may have its merits in bigger cities trying to jumpstart depressed areas, but in Oriental, it is a ‘solution’ in search of a problem. Odds are great it will create many more problems, not least of which will be the uncertainty this brings to those who live in what are now our town’s residential neighborhoods.

Change is going to happen. But when we, as a town make changes, we should have solid reasons for doing so. In this case, the backers of Conditional Zoning have not made their case, because each of their arguments fails to stand on its own. It’s almost as though they are hoping that the sum of several bad arguments will make one good one. Recent history has taught us the folly of giving a pass to such thinking.

And so, it falls on the citizens to question a nonsensical policy before it is put in place. This is the time to speak up. While zoning still means something in Oriental.

To download a copy of the proposal before the Town Board, click here.

Email may be sent to the Town Board, collectively, at this address: townhall@townoforiental.com

Individual email addresses, as supplied by Town Hall are:

Candy Bohmert, Commissioner
candy2000B@embarqmail.com

David Cox, Commissioner
davidcox@dockline.net

Nancy Inger, Commissioner
nancying@embarqmail.com

Kathy Kellam
mkkellam@gmail.com

Sherrill Styron, Commissioner
pstyron@pamlico.net

William (Bill) Sage, Mayor
Bill@sagelaw.net

Posted Monday June 30, 2008 by Melinda Penkava

email this story | back to top