Planners OK portion of mass zoning change

The Planning Commission recommended the rezoning of approximately 1,055 parcels in Old Bella Vista and indefinitely tabled the rezoning of approximately 210 properties throughout the city during its regular meeting Monday night.

Senior planner Jennifer Bonner said the Old Bella Vista lots needed to be rezoned because they were not zoned when the area was annexed into the city. Instead, the property was all defaulted to agricultural zoning, which does not fit the area’s use. The SPR, or Special Residential zoning, she said, is included in the latest version of the zoning code that is now in effect, and was designed specifically for the houses in Old Bella Vista.

Properties along U.S. Highway 71, she said, are to be zoned commercial, while the houses up the hill are under the new SPR designation. Properties in between are zoned RO, or Residential Office, she said, to serve as a buffer between residences and businesses.

“We’ve tried to work with where the lots are located at, how they’re used, how they’re platted,” she said.

Staff attorney Jason Kelley said that while the vast majority of uses on these lots do not fit agricultural zoning, they are grandfathered in as a pre-existing nonconforming use, but they cannot be expanded, added onto or developed.

“The city has rendered them unbuildable, undevelopable,” he said. “If the city does not put a zone on those … they are taking the value from them.”

This, he said, could expose the city to litigation.

The commission moved on to discuss the rezoning of lots throughout the city. They voted unanimously to table it indefinitely.

Kelley said it would be better in this case to wait on the comprehensive plan and see if this issue can be addressed through it.