The Common Council is contemplating a six-month moratorium on the development of large-scale rental housing in parts of the city.
A proposed local law authorizing the moratorium was introduced on Wednesday and the council voted to schedule a March 11 public hearing on it.
If enacted, the law would halt, for a six-month period, all city approvals for the establishment, location and operation of multiple-family dwellings with a capacity of more than 25 units, on property in Mixed Use (MU) and Mixed Light Industrial (MIL) zones.
Affected areas include downtown and some nearby neighborhoods, the vacated Eastern Niagara Hospital property, clusters along Davison Road, parts of lowertown and the west end, and MIL-zoned properties on South Transit Street and Lincoln Avenue.
The moratorium reflects a council consensus on the benefit of “fresh eyes” reviewing the local zoning code as it relates to housing development in mixed-use zones, according to council president and 3rd Ward Alderman Rowland O’Malley.
“I brought it up and the council agreed, let’s take a look at this,” he said. “As things change, let the council have more input in what goes on in this city.”
A recently aired proposal to convert the downtown anchor Bewley Building to 100 units of affordable housing with street-level retail storefronts has been criticized sharply by some in the community.
City attorney David Blackley, who wrote the draft of the local law, declined to identify that proposal, or any other specific possible large-scale housing development, as a spur for the moratorium. Instead, he said, the moratorium would buy time for the council to consider where large-scale housing developments generally “fit best” in the city.
The Mixed Use and Mixed Light Industrial zones are new, a product of the city updating parts of its comprehensive plan and zoning code last year. The basis for pausing large-scale housing development is stated thus in the draft law:
“It is inevitable that implementation of these significant changes would reveal potential gaps in the Code and considerations not fully evaluated in the Comprehensive Plan and resulting Code. One such situation that has arisen is the allowance of significant numbers of multi-family dwellings in the MU and MLI districts. The greater density caused by more than twenty-five such units within existing and new structures presents potential impacts on community services and other aspects of the environment that may not have been fully considered in adopting the current Plan and Code. …”
The text points out benefits as well as drawbacks to high-density housing development, and Blackley said he does not foresee any attempt to stop it altogether.
The public hearing on the proposed moratorium law is scheduled for 6 p.m. on March 11, at the beginning of the council’s next business meeting. The draft is being turned over to the Niagara County Planning Board for review, Blackley said.