Sandpoint staff outlines plan to split Commercial A into downtown core and outer core, proposes historic overlay

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, frontage and material standards, and a 45-foot height limit for those two districts. Commercial A outside the new cores would retain the current 65-foot allowance where appropriate. Staff also proposed a “relational height” rule to step building massing up from existing low-rise neighbors (for example, allowing a structure to exceed an adjacent single-story building by two stories rather than jump directly to the maximum height).

On historic preservation, staff said a drafted ordinance would establish a locally adopted overlay based on the 2018 Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation master plan and the existing national-register boundary. The ordinance would rely on the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for treatment of historic properties and create a certificate-of-appropriateness review administered by the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission for qualifying projects.

Staff highlighted specific land-use edits in a redlined table: several uses now shown as permitted in Commercial A would be restricted in the downtown core (for example, laundromats and certain storefront manufacturing would be allowed only in the outer core), and note 9 in the draft would make “real estate offices” non‑permitted on ground floors in the core. Dean said that change would render the roughly six existing ground-floor real-estate offices nonconforming under the new code.

On housing, the draft would allow ground-floor multifamily residential in the downtown outer core but would keep the downtown core focused on activity-generating uses (restaurants, retail, entertainment) and place multifamily on upper floors in the core. Dean said staff’s intent is to concentrate foot traffic and customer-oriented uses in the core while adding close-in housing in the outer core to support downtown businesses.

Commissioners pressed staff on several details, including how boundaries were drawn, whether accessory dwelling units (ADUs) should be addressed, the role of conditional use permits and site-plan review (staff said new commercial construction currently triggers site-plan review and structures over 15,000 square feet require a conditional use permit), and whether the proposal would incentivize or disincentivize development in particular locations. Dean and city staff said they will provide redlined code language and design standards for review at an upcoming meeting and then schedule hearings before the commission and city council.

Ellie Sosnes, chair of the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission, told the Planning and Zoning Commission she welcomed the proposal and is “looking forward to the details.”

No formal zoning vote or ordinance adoption occurred at the meeting; staff said the draft redlines and design standards will be posted and brought back for a fuller review and public hearings in coming weeks.