CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – When I moved into my small, single family home on Wausau’s west side, I checked the zoning. It is SR-7, single residential.
It’s important.
Zoning is the rules of the road for what can and can’t be done in the city’s neighborhoods. Zoning is what assures me that, in the future, my neighborhood will be more or less as it is now. I won’t wake up someday and find that a fast-food joint with a drive-through is next door. Or a factory. Or a bar. Or a multi-story apartment building. The zoning for my neighborhood even says you can’t put a mobile home on your property. A lot that’s intended for single family homes will stay that way.
Can zoning never be changed? Of course not. If a school is closed, a factory shuts down, or some other fundamental change takes place, it’s appropriate to adjust zoning accordingly. And most zoning changes are subtle, and are done in the name of economic development. Zoning that hamstrings the tax base is counterproductive.
But on Wausau’s near west side, south of Stewart Avenue, a developer is proposing a zoning change that is too much. The neighborhood, near the city’s yard waste site, is also zoned single family residential. The proposal is for four lots to be combined and turned into eight townhomes. This is the type of zoning change that should be rejected. People who own the small, middle class dwellings there live in a neighborhood of single-family housing. Under zoning rules, you can buy two adjacent lots and build a larger home on your property. But that’s not what this is. Eight townhomes on one, larger lot is a significant change to the neighborhood. There will be traffic. There will be parking. It will be different than everything around it.
I would be furious if I woke up one morning to learn that four of my neighbors have sold their land to a developer, and a new condo development will soon be going up next to my home.
I’m happy to report that, by a single vote, Wausau’s city council rejected this zoning change last week.
Chris Conley
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