Sandpoint staff to draft historic-overlay zoning and downtown design guidelines; no ordinance yet

City Planner Bill Dean told the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission on Sept. 16 that city staff will prepare a single ordinance to create a historic-overlay zoning district for downtown and add a related certificate-of-appropriateness permit and design guidelines.

Dean said the package will lift the hatched area shown in the city's comprehensive plan onto the zoning map as an "historic overlay" and connect the overlay to council-adopted guidelines that would govern exterior changes, new construction and the permit process. "We'd be lifting this geography, establishing by ordinance that this is now the historic overlay," Dean said.

The discussion matters because the overlay would create enforceable requirements for exterior changes that are currently only aspirational in the city's comprehensive plan. Dean told commissioners that guidelines alone are insufficient: unless architectural and design rules are tied to the zoning ordinance and a permit, they will not be mandatory when projects come through for building permits.

Dean described a two-tier approach: a hashed historic-overlay area where stricter "historic preservation" guidelines would apply and a broader "historic downtown" area with downtown design guidelines that are not necessarily historic in scope. He said staff plans to bring the entire zoning and guidelines package in one draft rather than in pieces so commissioners can see the whole proposal. "I'm going to bring an ordinance,…