REINVENTING HIGH STREET
Zoning changes aimed at revitalizing downtown
POTTSTOWN >> Borough council is backing zoning changes to the downtown area to help attract the kind of businesses that will help revitalize the area.
Without comment, council voted unanimously on Feb. 11 to authorize Borough Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr. to advertise the zoning changes for a public hearing.
After the hearing, most likely to be held at council’s next voting meeting on March 11, council will be free to vote on adopting the changes.
The purpose, Montgomery County Planner Brian Olszak told council at the Feb. 6 work session, was to update allowed uses with “more appropriate” definitions and to remove uses that planners consider inappropriate for a vital downtown area, like drive-through windows, pawn shops and tattoo parlors.
What’s been moved?
Most of those types of uses are now allowed only in the “western Gateway” zone, which is defined as being between 225 and 619 W. High St.
During public comment at the Feb. 11 council meeting, local attorney Michael Mauger recommended that council allow tattoo parlors downtown, as it is a much more accepted use than in the past.
“I believe downtown Phoe-
nixville has three tattoo parlors,” he said in reference to the fact that Phoenixville’s revitalized downtown is often helped up as an example of what Pottstown is trying to achieve.
“If we’re hoping to attract younger people, we should recognize that they do not consider this a stigma,” Mauger said.
Other uses relegated to the western gateway zone include check cashing storefronts, payday lenders and fortune tellers.
Massage therapy businesses, which the proposed ordinance defines as not being associated with a medical office, hospital, nursing home, physical therapist, chiropractor, surgeon or osteopath, are allowed as “conditional uses” in the traditional town neighborhood, neighborhood business and gateway zoning districts.
Among the most significant is a change to allow outdoor dining, currently prohibited under the downtown zoning.
What’s new downtown?
The proposed downtown zoning changes list a number of businesses that are allowed “by right,” meaning no zoning variance is allowed to open one. They include: • Art galleries and art schools;
• Indoor recreation (such as ax throwing);
• Microbreweries that are attached to a restaurant;
Another significant change is to allow outdoor dining as an accessory use for restaurants in the downtown area.
Restaurants that want to offer outdoor still have to keep the sidewalks clear, but the change would keep them from running afoul of the open container laws barring drinking alcohol on the street.
It was not immediately clear if the change was being made specifically to allow a beer garden reported proposed for the former VanBuskirk and Brother Hardware building in the 200 block of High Street.
What is clear, according to Peggy Lee-Clark, executive director of the borough’s economic development efforts at Pottstown Area Industrial Development, is that despite some recent headlines, things are happening in downtown Pottstown.
She told council at the Feb. 6 meeting that she had recently fielded a call from an irate Realtor who was complaining that “there are no properties nothing left for sale in downtown Pottstown.”
Lee-Clark said seven commercial properties were leased, and eight more sold in the last quarter of 2018 and several news businesses have opened or will open soon in the Pottstown Farmer’s Market.
“Investment is happening downtown every day,” she said.
“If we’re hoping to attract younger people, we should recognize that they do not consider this a stigma.” — Attorney Michael Mauger