Housing commission reviews zoning change to allow single‑use residential and incentives for adaptive reuse

At a Flagstaff City Housing Commission meeting, staff presented a proposed zoning code text amendment to allow single‑use residential development in commercial zones as an affordable‑housing incentive and to add incentives for adaptive reuse of existing commercial buildings.

The proposal, presented by Tiffany Antal, zoning code manager, would allow a project that is exclusively residential in a commercial zone to avoid the current conditional use permit process if it meets affordability conditions. "Single use residential is a very simple, far complicated way of basically saying a development containing only residential uses," Antal said. The draft ties by‑right relief to affordability: rental projects would need at least 20% of units at 80% area median income (AMI) for 30 years, and ownership projects would need 15% of units at 50% AMI, to avoid the conditional‑use review.

The amendment would also create an adaptive‑reuse pathway with additional incentives, Antal said: eligible buildings generally must be at least 15 years old (staff noted jurisdictions…