Among the items on the agenda for Monday night’s Worthington City Council meeting is consideration of a text amendment to city code regarding uses of certain properties in the city’s B-2 Central Business District.
Under the proposed change, parking lots, parking, terminals and cleaning would be uses permitted by conditional use permit only in the B-2 Central Business District. The Worthington Planning Commission considered the proposed text amendment during its July 12 meeting and voted unanimously to recommend that council approve the proposed text amendment.
The Planning Commission’s recommendation was based on four factors. At the top of the list was council members’ approval last month of an ordinance that removed the Retail Shopping Overlay District from city code. As part of that process, some downtown business owners requested that the city ensure that parking, terminals, and cleaning uses would not be permitted by-right. The council followed this request and directed staff to amend the underlying ‘B-2’ Central Business District. Part of this request came from the idea that it would be possible for someone to buy a building on 10th Street, tear it down and use it for parking.
Should council members concur with the findings of the Planning Commission, they may pass the first of three required readings of the text amendment by motion. A text amendment requires a 4/5 vote of the council to pass.
In another community development item on Monday’s agenda, the council will consider a change of zone request from Jonathon and Keturah Scribner for property located at 370 County Road 5 from its current ‘TZ’ Transition Zone designation to ‘R-4’ Medium Density Residential. The Worthington Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the requested change earlier this month.
In an additional matter, council is scheduled to act on awarding the construction contract for the state aid street bituminous overlay projects that include Clary Street from North Fredrick Avenue to McMillan Street, Fifth Avenue from 10th Street to 11th Street and 14th Street from Second Avenue to First Avenue. One bid was received in the amount of $241,034.95 from Duininck Inc. of Prinsburg. The bid was 17% lower than the engineer’s estimated cost.
