Council passes first reading of zone change ordinance

The Hampton City Council on Monday passed the first reading of an ordinance that would change the zoning to an empty lot that has drawn considerable conversation in recent months.

At its September 12 regu-lar council meeting, the Hampton City Council hosted a public hearing on a pro-posed rezoning change for a lot owned by First Christian Church. The change would take the lot from an R1 (resi-dential) and AT (residential with commercial considera-tions) split to fully AT. A developer of funeral homes has expressed interest in building a new funeral home on the property.

At the September 12 meet-ing, as well as meetings on Monday, Sept. 23 and last Thursday, the council heard concerns from residents in the area. Comments opposed to the zoning change included concerns about traffic and street parking congestion a funeral home would bring, concerns that a business would lower property values and feelings that the home-owners were not given ade-quate notice of the proposal or an opportunity to purchase the lot.

Representatives of the church and proposed funeral home defended the proposal, saying that the arrangement was put through the proper channels and that it was the church’s choice to do what they would like with the land it owned.

As the discussion contin-ued, the council delayed the first of three readings to allow people on both sides of the issue to speak if they pleased and give the council adequate opportunity to gather facts and information and consider comments presented in the hearings.

Following another public hearing at last Thursday’s meeting, the council then discussed their thoughts and concerns. Councilman Rich-ard Lukensmeyer presented a proposal that would limit the street parking on 7th Avenue and 6th Street and dictate, which direction vehicles should travel in the area. Lukensmeyer said he devel-oped the proposal because of the concerns about traffic raised and felt that those con-cerns were valid. At the pre-vious council meeting, Mayor Russell Wood explained that the church did agree to a po-tential conditional rezoning, which outlined appropriate businesses that could occupy the lot as well as travel re-strictions and a mandatory minimum of 35 off street parking spaces. Lukensmeyer said that additional parking and traffic regulations would be necessary to ensure the safety of motorists and pedes-trians and to reduce the con-gestion on the road.

“Traffic and parking are the things I think are the most, I think, very, very le-gitimate concerns across the board,” he said. “I think it’s important we take no action without also stating we are going to severely control parking on both sides of 6th Avenue and 6th Street in such a way that doesn’t impede the use.

“That’s the only way I can even consider going with this conditional use would be is if we implement a guaranteed to all people in the area that no parking will be implemented before we pass this zoning change,” he said.

The council agreed to dis-cuss parking restrictions at its next workshop meeting on Monday, Oct. 21. After addi-tional comments and discus-sion from the council regard-ing the zoning change, includ-ing commendation from the council towards the home-owners and church representa-tives for participating in the public forum, the council voted to pass the first reading of the ordinance with five votes in favor to one opposed, with Councilman Pat Palmer voting no.

The council is scheduled to conduct the second reading of the ordinance at its Thurs-day, Oct. 24 regular meeting. The ordinance needs to pass three readings to take effect.