Cross Plains plan commission creates Community Facilities zoning district, rezones village hall site

The Village of Cross Plains Plan Commission voted June 2 to recommend zoning ordinance amendments that create a new Community Facilities zoning district and to rezone the village hall and police station site at 1601 Bourbon Road to that district.

The change is intended to allow community uses such as a village hall and similar institutional buildings to be permitted uses rather than require a conditional use permit, reducing project steps for village-owned facilities while applying a single set of development standards for parking, landscaping, setbacks and other site features.

"This item would create a new zoning district called community facilities," said Sonya, a village staff member. "The purpose of creating this district would be to create standards that work better for uses like the new village hall that's coming forward and other community facilities."

Commissioners debated which activities should be permitted by right in the new district and which should remain conditional. Concerns raised included whether active outdoor recreation (for example, ballfields with lights), outdoor display (examples given in the code include wholesale display of inventory), and group daycare should be permitted as-of-right in the new district or require conditional review when occurring on privately owned property. One commissioner said churches and private organizations may need different treatment than public, municipal uses; others argued for keeping flexibility for village-run public uses such as a farmers market.

The commission agreed to three substantive edits to the draft land-use table before forwarding the ordinance: change active outdoor recreation from a permitted use to conditional in the new district; treat group daycare as a conditional use; and prohibit principal outdoor display in the new district (temporary, incidental displays would be regulated separately). A separate typographical correction was also ordered to remove an erroneous permitted-use mark in the adjacent Community Mixed Use (CMU) column.

A written public comment from a resident, identified in the record as Julius Smith of 3601 Creekside Way, requested that the legal description for the rezoned parcel include a certified survey map reference ("Lot 3 of certified survey map number 10045 recorded in volume 58 of certified survey maps of Dane County on pages 301–303 as document number 3321512") and the first 33 feet of the adjacent public right of way so future right-of-way alterations would not require re-zoning of newly vested private property. Staff and commissioners discussed the request and agreed to provide a clearer legal description before final recording; staff said it is not standard practice to rezone public right-of-way and that an accurate parcel legal will be supplied for the record.

A motion to recommend the zoning ordinance amendments and associated changes to section 84.54 (land-use table) carried; the commission subsequently voted to recommend a map amendment rezoning 1601 Bourbon Road to Community Facilities. The motion to rezone was moved by Kevin (Plan Commission member) and seconded; the commission recorded an affirmative vote and the motion passed.

Next steps: staff will incorporate the agreed edits to the land-use table and provide a clarified certified-survey-based legal description for the 1601 Bourbon Road parcel before the matter proceeds to the village board for final action.