A revised development proposal for a used car lot on High Street is set to be heard by the zoning committee of the Clintonville Area Commission.
A four-story, 32-unit apartment building is now being proposed for the 0.46-acre site at 3021 N. High St. The new building would contain about 2,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor and a partially-covered parking lot with space for 30 cars.
Last summer, the owner of the lot – Brian Higgins of Arch City Development – proposed a five-story, 43-unit building for the site, but feedback from the commission led him to revise the project.
“It was 100% driven by the commission,” Higgins said, when asked about the project’s reduction in size. “They made it very clear that they would not support a five-story building despite it being on the dense High Street corridor, on the city’s busiest transit corridor, very bikeable, etc.”
“We had a traffic and parking study done, as even at the reduced size, we are short residential and commercial parking spaces,” he added. “The study said that there is ample on-street parking in the vicinity of the building to compensate for our variance request.”
The parcel’s current zoning requires 48 parking spaces for the residential portion of the project and more for the commercial space, although the amount would depend on what type of business goes into the space – if it is all occupied by a restaurant, for example, the existing code calls for an additional 27 parking spaces to be provided.
With just 30 spaces designated for residents, variances will be required for parking and for a couple of other discrepancies, like a request to shift four required parking lot trees to the High Street side of the building instead.
The committee will weigh in on the latest iteration of the project at its January 26 meeting before sending it on to the full commission.
For more information, see www.clintonvilleareacommission.org.
Editor’s note (1/20/22): This article was updated to remove a reference to a required height variance. The project does not require a variance for height because of a provision in the zoning code which allows a building to exceed the allowed height in a given district (35 feet in this case) if the additional floor is set back from the main facade.
Additional Reading: Study Shows Need for Zoning Code Re-Write, City Says
