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Sandpoint planning commission reviews draft commercial map, proposes ‘neighborhood’ and ‘community’ commercial districts
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Summary
City planning staff presented a draft zoning map that would collapse multiple commercial categories into two primary types—community commercial for larger, highway-facing uses and neighborhood commercial for smaller, walkable businesses—while preserving downtown rules and addressing nonconforming uses and parking.
City planning staff presented a working draft of a rewritten commercial zoning chapter to the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission on April 21, proposing two principal commercial districts intended to concentrate larger, higher-intensity uses at corridor nodes while allowing smaller-scale, neighborhood-oriented businesses in between.
"If we concentrate the higher intensity land uses in two areas and allow the middle piece to reflect smaller scale businesses and smaller scale development, it's gonna probably make for a nicer corridor that feels less like a strip mall," said Bill Dean, deputy director of community planning and development, as he showed a draft map that replaces the current A/B/C commercial categories with a purple "community commercial" district and a light-green "neighborhood commercial" district.
Dean said the community commercial zones would accommodate larger lots and uses that serve the wider Bonner County area — for example, grocery stores, larger retail and hospitals — while neighborhood commercial would allow ground-floor residential or small retail such as coffee shops, personal services and small professional offices. Staff described neighborhood commercial parcels as typically accommodating spaces of roughly 3,000 square feet or smaller and suggested relaxing downtown-style, zero-foot setbacks in those areas to better fit existing homes and small businesses.
The draft attempts to reconcile existing nonconforming uses — such as long-standing auto repair shops and gas stations — with future zoning. Dean clarified that existing nonconforming businesses could remain in operation, but "if the use is discontinued for two years, then it converts" to the new underlying zoning, which could allow residential rebuilds or other permitted uses.
Commissioners pressed staff on several site-specific questions, including how mixed residential blocks that currently carry commercial zoning would be treated, how parking requirements would apply to very small lots, and which uses would be confined to community commercial or industrial zones. Dean said the city does not propose wholesale changes to the parking ordinance; instead, the current parking standards would continue to determine required spaces for new or redeveloped commercial activity, with alley-loaded or limited off-street parking considered for very small neighborhood lots.
Staff walked the commission through a consolidated land-use table that lists allowable uses across the city's zones. Proposed clarifications include: permitting daycare broadly across commercial districts; relegating commercial storage and heavy outdoor equipment rental to industrial zones; allowing drive-through restaurants only in community commercial areas or in neighborhood commercial without amplified speaker boxes; and calling out newer or sensitive uses (for example, cigar or hookah lounges) for separate legal review.
The map and table were presented as a work-in-progress. Dean said staff plans additional refinement of development standards (setbacks, heights and other notes) and indicated the commission should expect at least one more meeting on the zoning draft before staff moves to the separate historic-preservation code discussion. He also suggested a joint workshop with the City Council in June to explain map choices and trade-offs.
Next steps: staff will continue to refine the land-use table and development standards, consider commissioner feedback about specific intersections and blocks (notably Division and Pine, near schools and the VFW), and return to the commission for additional review. The commission did not take formal action on the zoning rewrite itself at the April 21 meeting.
