Sandpoint planners review draft commercial zoning and preservation rules as staff readies binders

Sandpoint’s Planning and Zoning Commission spent its May 5 meeting walking through a near-final draft of the city’s commercial zoning update and a new historic preservation code, as deputy director Bill Dean delivered a binder for each commissioner with maps, a crosswalk of ordinance changes and a proposed schedule for hearings.

The discussion matters because the draft will reshape where and how commercial and mixed-use development can occur downtown and in adjacent neighborhoods, and because the preservation chapter establishes a legal pathway for protecting historic properties. "You're gonna get a real good picture of that when you get these binders," Dean told the commission, promising one-on-one briefings before matters go to hearing.

Dean said the packet includes a large-format zoning map, a crosswalk table that maps existing ordinance provisions to the draft text, and separate tabs for general provisions, commercial zoning, residential follow-ups and a 13–14 page historic preservation chapter. "Every single word in here can be changed again after I give it to you," he told commissioners, urging them to flag areas that need more work before hearings are scheduled.

Commissioners focused on several recurring questions: what uses should be explicitly allowed in each zone; whether zoning should concentrate mixed-use activity into compact nodes rather than leaving long commercial corridors; and whether the city should write rules that require new development next to small historic structures to step back or mirror existing setbacks.

"There's some lingering questions," Commissioner Scott Torbey said, asking whether the matrix of allowed uses by zone was clear and whether the zoning vision accounted for underground infrastructure capacity. Dean responded that zoning is an aspirational tool that specifies what is allowed where, while infrastructure capacity and permit findings are addressed later in the zoning-administration phase and in site-specific studies. "Zoning's aspirational about what it is that you wanna see in any given parcel," he said. "It has nothing to do with infrastructure."

Reid Weber and staff debated whether the comprehensive plan's mixed-use corridors should instead be implemented as concentrated nodes to improve the likelihood of vibrant, walkable centers. "If you color that map a certain color, that has implications for that property owner," Dean said, urging commissioners to examine the map parcel by parcel.

A substantial portion of the debate centered on a two-block cluster of smaller, historic single-family structures that have largely been converted to offices. Staff displayed an 1898 plat of the area and outlined options including targeted downzoning, district-specific setback rules that relate new development to adjacent small structures, or placing individual properties into a historic district. "As a community, there is this two-block cluster of these smaller structures... Is that important enough for us to carve this out of the downtown zoning standards?" staff member Jason asked.

Commissioners offered differing views. Some urged caution about creating a unique, narrowly tailored zone for a handful of blocks because it could complicate the code and affect many parcels; others emphasized managing change incrementally to preserve neighborhood scale. "We're talking about managing change," Dean said. "You can't have it both ways. You're going to promote the change or you're going to promote the preservation."

The meeting also touched on how zoning interacts with broader market and economic forces. Commissioners noted the limits of zoning as a stand-alone economic-development tool: it signals preferred uses but cannot on its own guarantee that a particular business or project will materialize. Dean said cities have limited direct tools and that zoning must be paired with other strategies to attract investment.

Staff closed with several procedural items: the city will publish the binders digitally and distribute hard copies; Dean offered individual staff briefings on the draft; and planning staff announced a May 20 city council public hearing to repeal and replace Sandpoint’s short-term rental ordinance to conform with recent state law (House Bill 583). Jason also flagged enacted state legislation that requires cities to allow single-section manufactured homes down to 400 square feet, noting the code will be amended to comply.

With no further business, Chair Moe's Dunkel adjourned the meeting at 7:09 p.m. The commission requested time to review the binder materials, and staff said they will return with refined language and a hearing schedule after commissioners provide feedback and staff completes the detailed crosswalk and findings.