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Sandpoint staff outlines plan to split Commercial A into downtown core and outer core, proposes historic overlay
Summary
City staff proposed carving Commercial A into two downtown districts, adding design standards and a local historic-preservation overlay and changing ground-floor and height rules. Commissioners asked for boundary refinements and staff will return with redlined code and public hearings; no ordinance vote occurred.
Sandpoint city staff on Tuesday night proposed to redraw the city’s Commercial A zoning around a two-tier downtown model and to adopt a local historic-preservation overlay, outlining changes that would limit some ground-floor uses, allow limited ground-floor housing in an outer downtown zone, and set new building-height and design standards.
Deputy Director of Community Planning and Development Bill Dean told the Planning and Zoning Commission the presentation was intended as a discussion and not a hearing. “Right now, we have 200 plus acres of Commercial A zoning, and all of it, every square inch of it requires commercial space on the ground floor,” Dean said, arguing that the current rules apply the same standards to peripheral sites and to the heart of downtown and that the mismatch dilutes downtown vitality.
The staff proposal would create two new districts — a downtown core and a downtown outer core — with different permitted uses,…
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