Bill Dean: City Council gave green light to continue Commercial A zoning work; historic-preservation code review to follow

Bill Dean, the commission’s liaison, told commissioners on March 10 that City Council responded positively to a recent presentation and has “basically give[n] us a green light to continue.” The update was delivered at the Sandpoint Arts, Culture, and Historic Preservation Commission meeting in City Hall.

Dean said Planning & Zoning is nearly finished with an ordinance for the city’s “Commercial A” zoning and that staff will shift to a thorough review of the historic-preservation code. He proposed using hypothetical case studies — for example, an addition, a demolition, or a new building adjacent to the district — to help commissioners understand how the proposed ordinance and preservation code would be applied in practice.

The liaison framed the case studies as a way for the commission to develop a reasoned recommendation for Planning & Zoning, which in turn will advise City Council. “That way it’ll get us into the ordinance together a little bit,” Dean said, adding his goal is to have the package ready to take to City Council this summer. He also reported he’d requested feedback from planners in other cities and had sent a draft to an external reviewer named in the meeting as “Shippo” for comment.

Commissioners expressed support for the case-study approach and said working through concrete examples would make it easier to apply new permitting and preservation terminology. Dean offered to return to the commission as needed to answer technical questions and to bring materials to future meetings.

Next steps: Planning & Zoning will complete its remaining ordinance work in the coming one or two meetings and staff will schedule a sequence of case-study review sessions with this commission before drafting a final recommendation to forward to Planning & Zoning and City Council.