City council implements temporary zoning regulations

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    By Spencer Parkinson

    Housing and zoning issues continue to be a problem in Utah Valley, but Provo City Council is taking steps to get things headed in the right direction.

    “We”re going to take the bull by the horns,” said councilman Dave Knecht. “We need to do things in a different way.”

    The council unanimously voted Tuesday night in favor of a six-month hold on applications for multiple-family and apartment dwellings in certain zones within the city.

    This will create temporary zoning regulations prohibiting the approval of new two-family, multiple-family and apartment dwellings in all zones within the city, said councilwoman Cindy Richards.

    The temporary hold would stop various higher-density residential construction in the area surrounding BYU.

    “The purpose of the temporary zoning regulation is to allow time for the administration and council to determine where and how high density residential development should occur in Provo City,” Richards said.

    Richards said the goals of the council”s proposal are pretty straightforward.

    “We want to prepare and adopt a new special zone that will allow high-density residential development in appropriate areas and figure out what areas of the city need to be up zoned or down zoned to promote the desired use of the new zone,” Richards said.

    Councilman Mark Hathaway said the reason for the hold is basically twofold.

    “First of all, the Community Development Department staff is overloaded and overwhelmed with all the applications,” Hathaway said. “Plus, the system we have right now isn”t working.”

    Hathaway feels the goals of the temporary zone are much simpler.

    “We want to address and solve the problems,” Hathaway said. “We want to recover the pioneer neighborhoods. We want student housing to be closer to campus and not spread out throughout the city. We want to deal with the parking and high traffic problems as well.”

    The hold will also allow the City Council to better deal with those housing projects that somehow seem to get through the ambiguities of the zoning ordinances, Hathaway said.

    “Any ordinance has loopholes,” Hathaway said. “We are trying to close those up and achieve our goals as a council.”

    Knecht said he feels the hold is exactly the action the council needed to take.

    “We are trying to bring things back to the council so that we have the final say in what projects are done,” Knecht said.

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