The neighborhood won't be transformed overnight, but the City Council hopes a zoning change it approved Tuesday will have some favorable long-term effects on Sandy's historic district.
The council voted unanimously to change the zoning for the majority of the old town area - 235 acres of it - to allow construction of single-family homes on lots as small as 8,000 square feet and to ban new duplexes.The previous zoning also carried an 8,000-square-foot minimum lot size but allowed duplexes on as little as 10,000 square feet. The new zoning will apply to 590 lots, many of which already have legal non-conforming structures on them.
The new zoning makes it difficult for property owners to split lots in the old town area, which stretches roughly between State Street and 700 East and 8400 and 9000 South. The city's planning staff had proposed a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet, which some citizens feared would promote lot splits and add more homes to an already congested area. Residents turned out en masse to oppose that idea at a Planning Commission hearing last spring.
Tuesday's public hearing before the City Council was calm by comparison, although the council was given the option of approving a 7,500-square-foot minimum lot size. Only three of the 11 citizens who addressed the council argued for the smaller minimum size.
In approving the change, council members said they hoped it would bring more continuity to the city's historic neighborhoods.
"The way you stabilize a transient neighborhood is to make it a residential neighborhood," said Councilman Scott Cowdell, who represents the area. "You don't make it a multifamily neighborhood."