MORGANTOWN – Among the items listed for consideration when Morgantown City Council convenes Tuesday evening is a change to Article 1373 creating a process to revive abandoned nonconforming uses.
State law authorizes uses that were in existence and in compliance with the law before a zoning regulation was adopted to continue until they are abandoned, which typically means not used for the nonconforming purpose for more than one year according to city code.
Under the proposed ordinance change, a process would be created through which nonconforming uses could be revived for their original purpose despite becoming “abandoned.”
“I think as we’re talking about adaptive reuse and increasing our housing stock, this is just allowing reuse to happen without being adaptive – just allowing things to be used as they were built to be used,” Mayor Danielle Trumble said. “I don’t think we should be penalizing people who have spent more than a year working on their property, renovating their property only to then find out they cannot use their property.”
Currently, once a use is considered abandoned, the only method to reestablish that use is by going before the Morgantown Planning Commission, and ultimately city council, to get the property rezoned.
Trumble noted there have been a number of such cases coming before the planning commission in recent months.
This change would not only simplify that process, but it’s viewed as one small factor in a larger overall equation aimed at increasing housing stock and affordability issues within the city.
During a recent meeting of the Morgantown Land Reuse and Preservation Agency, Development Service Director Rickie Yeager explained that’s how these types of changes have occurred in recent years, as piecemeal or one-off adjustments meant to address a specific need or policy desire.
However, he noted a process is underway that could result in sweeping changes to the city’s zoning code and subdivision and land development ordinance.
City staff is currently putting together a request for proposals in search of a consultant to initiate “a complete overhaul” of both.
“The comprehensive plan basically set forth a vision for 2023 to say this is how we think the community should potentially grow over time – more density where contextually appropriate. Our zoning ordinances and some of our districts probably don’t align with some of the recommendations of that comp plan,” he told the LRPA.
Once a consultant is in place, Yeager said it will likely be a yearlong process involving public input and review from the city’s planning commission before it ultimately ends up before city council for adoption.
“If you’re looking to overhaul the city zoning ordinance and the regulations that govern how people can use their properties in the future, it’s going to be an involved process, but one that we’re looking forward to,” he explained during council’s February committee of the whole meeting. “This effort will address a variety of issues, including where and how different development typologies are permitted by right or conditional use. It will also be a good time to look holistically at some of the potential barriers to development that were discussed in the informational meeting, such as the minimum lot size requirements, off street parking requirements. This is the time we’ll look at that holistically and see what makes sense for our community and how we can actually implement it going forward – both from the zoning perspective as well as from the land development subdivision side of the house.”
According to the city, substantial updates to the city’s zoning code were last made in 2006. Additional modifications followed in the mid-to-late 2010s.
