Currently, the City of Wausau is considering allowing a vacant warehouse on the East Side to be used as an indoor skateboard park. The proposal went to a public hearing and the Plan Commission said yes to the plan with a 5-0 vote. However, the City Council was to make the final decision last week, and they decided to “table” decision to May.
This has generated much discussion in other forum boards that I participate in, and some of the discussion was to why the City of Wausau turned down the proposal. Other parts of the discussion related to why the City should even have the right to deny this if the property is zoned for commercial use.
Since my last topic was meant to be a little on the edgy side and generate discussion (which it did very well), I thought I would ease back a bit and just throw a little “educational” information out there on zoning.
One of the principals of our country is private property rights. The thought is that you can own property and do with that property pretty much whatever you want, as long as your use of your property does not interfere with other people enjoying and using their property. It is because of this restriction that your use should not interfere with other’s use, that the concept of zoning comes about.
Municipalities take each piece of property and apply zoning to it. Zoning defines generally what the property can be used for. There are many different types of zoning, to just name a few, there are Residential, Commercial (sometimes called Business), Manufacturing (sometimes called Industrial), Agricultural and many others. Each municipality decides what types of zoning they will have and what is allowed in each type of zoning. (This can make life difficult for people like me, because the basic single-family zoning codes, often called R-1, are different in Wausau, Weston, Schofield, Rothschild, Mosinee, Rib Mountain, etc.)
The thought is that you group these properties together in zoning districts. Although they differ from city to city, R-1 is usually the most restrictive single-family residential zoning. The thought is that if you are in an R-1 district, your neighbor cannot do something on their property that would interfere with your use of yours.
In addition to the different types of zoning, there are also different “severities” (for lack of a better word) indicated by the numbers. For example, R-1 might be single family, R-2 duplex, R-3 low-density multifamily and R-4 high-density multifamily.
To protect these properties within the zoning district, the municipality then establishes uses. It establishes permitted uses, conditional uses and prohibited uses. These are pretty much self-explanatory. If something is a permitted use, you may do it. If your neighbors don’t like it, that’s too bad — it is a permitted use. A conditional use is outside of what would normally be permitted, but under the right circumstances, might be a good fit within that zoning. You must ask permission from the municipality to do something that is a conditional use, and you can only do it if given this permission. And as the name implies, the municipality can put a number of conditions on the use to ensure that it does not interfere with people enjoying the use of their properties within that zoning district. If what you want to do is not a permitted use and is not a conditional use, it is by default prohibited, and you just simply cannot do it. You cannot ask the city to let you do it as they don’t have the authority to grant you permission – it is simply prohibited.
The way the process works for conditional uses differs from city to city, but basically you must ask for the city to give you permission. The first step is normally through a committee (in Wausau, this is the Plan Commission). One of the things this committee must do is have a public hearing. They will post notices and mail notices to neighboring properties. They want the neighbors to know that someone wants to do something that is normally not “permitted,” and the neighbors have a right to come tell the plan commission what they think of the proposed use.
After hearing the testimony, the plan commission then decides if they will recommend the conditional use and what type of conditions they will put on this use to help address the concerns brought up by those at the hearing. The commission does not approve or deny the use, they only RECOMMEND approval or denial. The City Council, or Village Board, as the case may be, makes the final decision.
Once the City gets the recommendation, they can do a number of things. They can agree with the recommendation, they can disagree with it, they can send it back to the plan commission with further questions or they can put it on hold as more information develops.
So, on the Indoor Skateboard Park, why is this before the city when the property is zoned commercially? Well, technically the zoning is Manufacturing, M-2 to be specific, and this type of indoor entertainment facility is not a “permitted use” within the M-2 — it is a conditional use. Therefore this went through the hearing process and found itself before the Council.
Why did the City say no when the plan commission recommended yes? Well, the City did not say no. The City “tabled” it — they basically put it on hold. The plan commission had “suggested” the skateboard park owners do a few things. The park owners did not realize that in “playing the game,” when the commission “suggests” something, what they are really saying is “do this tomorrow.” Because the “suggestions” had not yet been done, the City did not make a decision in April — they just pushed it back to May to give the owners time to heed the “suggestions.”
It’s a complicated process with a pretty steep learning curve. But hopefully this helps explains a little bit of the inner workings at City Hall.