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Athens is thinking about special zoning to promote more pedestrian-friendly business growth
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The city of Athens is looking to ease parking requirements among other things to promote commercial development in certain neighborhoods and make it easier for pedestrians to access these businesses.
The proposed changes are part of what’s called a neighborhood corridor overlay zone. This is an additional layer of zoning on top of the existing zoning codes that regulate development in a residential or commercial zone.
Zoning codes often come in the form of restrictions on what can be built where and how. An overlay zone can add additional restrictions to a particular area, but it can also be used to ease certain requirements.
The city is looking to do a little of both with its proposed overlay zone to achieve its twin goals of promoting more small-scale business development in certain neighborhoods but also encouraging people, especially those who live nearby, to patronize these businesses without a car.
One way the proposal intends to achieve this is by relaxing parking requirements in a couple of ways. First, businesses that want to open in an existing building would not have to provide more parking even if the zoning code requires more parking.
For example, someone may want to open a restaurant in a spot that was once an insurance office. The code may require more parking spaces for restaurants than insurance offices, but the overlay would erase that requirement in this situation.
Second, the proposal would cut the required number of parking spaces in half for new buildings.
“We want to be able to have walkable communities … but then also address our economic needs by allowing for smaller commercial spaces that don’t have to provide seas of parking, and so we’re opening the doors up more for smaller businesses to really get off the ground,” said Meghan Jennings, the city’s planner.
A shift away from auto-centric zoning
The city’s zoning codes were adopted decades ago and reflect the auto-centric suburban design popular at the time, with homes and businesses segregated into separate zones. Jennings said this isn’t a particularly good fit for a small, compact city like Athens, and the codes don’t always align well with the city’s environmental goal of reducing vehicle traffic.
The intention behind the proposed overlay zone is to begin to wind the clock back to a time when businesses and homes were less segregated and more residents walked to nearby stores and restaurants.
Jennings said there is a movement in the planning community nationally to eliminate parking requirements entirely and take a more market-based approach, leaving it up to businesses to decide how much parking they actually need.
While relaxing parking requirements, the proposed overlay zone would also add some requirements to make business corridors more pedestrian friendly.
For example, new commercial buildings would be built right up to the sidewalk, as they are in the uptown business district, which existed long before cars came into the picture. Parking spaces would be pushed to the rear.
The main entrance would be along the sidewalk instead of facing the parking area as is often the case for designs that cater more to motorists.
The wall facing the sidewalk would have to have a certain amount of window space, so people walking by could see in and presumably feel more welcomed into the space.
The signage would be attached to the building at pedestrian scale instead of up high on poles for motorists to see.
“It’s speaking to the historic structure of commercial uses before cars really came into the picture,” Jennings said.
Promoting more mixed-use development
The intention is not to freeze motorists out entirely. Jennings said she understands some people will still prefer to drive to businesses because of the distance, the weather, health complications, because they have small children, and a host of other reasons.
“We’re definitely not saying we want to abandon all vehicle provisions or amenities on these commercial corridors,” she said, “but we want to bring the corridors back to the neighborhoods and to the pedestrians that are immediately adjacent to it.”
The proposed overlay zone would also encourage more mixed-use development, with business located on the bottom of multifloor buildings and residential space located above. Older areas of the city once had more of this, but as the university student population grew, many of the bottom floor spaces were converted to rental housing.
The proposal would restrict the first floor of buildings where mixed-use is permitted to business use only to avoid having even more potential business space converted to rental housing.
A draft of the proposed overlay zone, which the Planning Commission took up at its most recent meeting, is posted on the city’s website. Based on feedback the city has received, that draft is undergoing some changes (although nothing presented in this story is being changed). The commission will take up the revised proposal at its meeting scheduled for next Wednesday. If the commission approves the proposal, it will move on to the City Council for approval.
If the proposal is approved, the next step will be deciding where in the city to apply the overlay zone. This will involve more meetings with residents and business owners to get their perspective. Jennings suggested likely locations might include neighborhoods that once had a stronger business presence.