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Sandpoint staff proposes new lot‑coverage curve and slight RM density increase to ease ADU/multifamily development
Summary
Community Planning and Development Director Jason Welker told the Planning and Zoning Commission on Nov. 4 that staff is proposing to replace separate building‑footprint and impervious‑surface limits with a single, tiered impervious‑surface standard and a companion RM development table that could allow modestly larger multifamily buildings and make ADUs easier to add.
Community Planning and Development Director Jason Welker told the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission on Nov. 4 that staff is proposing to remove the city’s separate maximum building‑footprint standard and adopt a single impervious‑surface standard that would top out at roughly 70% on the smallest residential lots and scale down to about 35% on the largest lots.
Welker said the change is intended to simplify overlapping rules and give property owners more flexibility to add living space, including accessory dwelling units (ADUs), without changing setbacks or other dimensional standards. “There are only two ways to get affordable housing, density or subsidy,” Welker quoted Councilman Joel Esparrow as saying during a recent town‑hall discussion, and he used that framing to describe the amendment as a measured way to allow greater density where infrastructure already exists.
The staff proposal includes a stepped table that reduces allowable impervious percentages as lot size increases and a companion amendment to the RM (residential…
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