Commission recommends zoning text amendments to ease infill housing in SR-6 and SR-4 districts

The Plant Commission on Tuesday voted to recommend draft zoning-text amendments that would reduce minimum lot area and setbacks while increasing allowable building coverage in the SR-6 and SR-4 single-family residential districts to make infill housing and small-lot development more feasible.

Planner Bryce Hamburg told the commission the SR-6 district — where many lots are nonconforming to current code because they were created before modern zoning — is the primary target. Staff recommended reducing minimum lot area in SR-6 to 4,500 square feet, reducing front and street-side setbacks to 10 feet (with a minimum garage-door setback to protect the sidewalk), reducing minimum side setbacks from 7.5 to 5 feet (yielding 10 feet between adjacent houses at minimum), and lowering minimum rear setback to 20 feet. Hamburg said the SR-6 changes would also increase maximum building coverage on a lot to about 60 percent to reflect existing built conditions and to allow slightly larger, more marketable footprints for new homes.

For SR-4 (commonly used in newer subdivisions, including Green Acres), staff proposed a roughly 15–20 percent reduction in minimum lot area, a minimum lot width of 50 feet, and an increase in maximum building coverage to 35 percent; Hamburg said those changes are intended to lower costs for infill, reduce development-review barriers and better match the built environment. He noted these are minimum standards and developers could still choose larger setbacks or smaller coverage as desired.

Kent Miller, a member of the Marshfield Area Habitat for Humanity board and resident, read a written statement supporting changes to make small infill lots viable for Habitat builds. Miller described recent searches for lots and said existing setback and lot-size rules made otherwise suitable parcels infeasible: "Most are too expensive or too small based on current setback requirements," he said, citing a 44-foot corner lot that would allow only a 22-foot-wide house after setbacks.

Commissioners moved to approve the draft redline ordinance language for both zoning districts and recommend it to the common council. The motion passed on roll call with Commissioners Piles, Frederick, Brunetti, Caprillion, Council member Norman O'Reilly and Mayor T. Scribe voting yes. Staff will prepare the ordinance language for council consideration.