Sandpoint planners preview major commercial-zoning rewrite, spar over metal siding and façade rules

Sandpoint — At a commission meeting on April 7, 2026, Deputy Director of Community Planning and Development Bill Dean presented a working draft that would overhaul the city’s commercial zoning and downtown design standards, preview a large rezoning map, and tighten rules for building materials and storefront glazing.

Dean told the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission the rewrite is “an iterative process” intended to better match the zoning map to the city’s comprehensive plan and to provide clearer, more objective design standards for downtown and other commercial districts. He urged commissioners to treat the draft as a starting point for changes to the downtown core, an outer core and other rebranded commercial districts.

The draft carries several notable specifics. Downtown ground floors would remain tightly scripted: the code retains a minimum fenestration requirement for downtown storefronts, calling for 70% clear glazing of ground-floor façade area between 2 and 10 feet above the sidewalk to promote active storefronts. For commercial areas outside downtown, the draft distinguishes primary materials (masonry, timber, architectural concrete) from accent materials (fiber cement, exposed concrete, CMU, weathered steel) and proposes an initial limit that accent materials not exceed 50% of any façade.

“These are rules that work for our living room,” Dean said, urging objective standards that allow designers flexibility while preventing plainly inappropriate outcomes. On a separate point he recommended removing a code requirement that had asked developers of buildings larger than 15,000 square feet to submit a prescriptive ‘‘reuse/renewal’’ plan at permitting; Dean called that requirement burdensome and said market forces and standard permitting processes should govern future reuse.

Commissioners pressed staff on several areas that remained vague. Vice Chair Wayne Benner and Commissioner Reed Weber — whom Benner identified as an architect for the record — led a sustained exchange over how to describe and limit metal on façades. Commissioners warned that unconstrained metal siding risks creating low-grade ‘‘pole-barn’’ appearances, while also acknowledging that high-quality architectural metal panels and some weathered-steel elements are appropriate for the city’s mountain-modern character. Commissioners discussed options such as prohibiting low-grade metal siding, allowing only ‘‘architectural metal panels,’’ and capping metal at a percentage of façade area to prevent full metal-clad buildings outside appropriate contexts.

Architect Ethan Davis, who spoke during public comment, urged care with imitation veneers and window detailing and voiced support for the downtown glazing standard: “The 70% seems to me reasonable,” he said, adding that thin brick veneer can look ‘‘chintzy’’ unless window returns, lintels and sills are detailed properly.

Staff also previewed a side-by-side zoning map exercise that would rebrand and recolor many commercial parcels: a smaller downtown core and focused retail nodes would be emphasized in the map, while other corridors currently zoned for higher-intensity commercial use would be opened to mixed‑use residential or lower‑intensity commercial to better match existing development patterns.

Dean said the commission will continue the materials and zoning-boundary discussions at its next meeting and invited architects and other stakeholders to submit suggested code language or examples. The commission approved the consent calendar at the start of the meeting, and no formal rezoning hearings were held at this session.

What’s next: staff will return with refined draft language and a more complete lot-by-lot rezoning proposal; historic-preservation ordinance work will follow once the commercial and downtown standards are settled.