Planners OK zoning change in response to bus transit line

By Jeremy Twitchell

Friday, April 17, 2009 | 6:28 p.m.

Henderson’s plan to rezone more than 1,100 acres along its eight-mile stretch of Boulder Highway to make way for large, mixed-use developments has won unanimous approval from the city’s Planning Commission.

The Boulder Highway Investment Strategy, as the plan has been called, is the city’s effort to revamp the Boulder Highway Corridor in response to the Regional Transportation Commission’s plan to put a rapid bus transit line on the highway.

The plan, approved Thursday night, has been in the works for more than two years, and planners say the goal is to encourage redevelopment along Boulder Highway by establishing new zoning standards.

The zoning provides incentives, such as bonus density, for developers who build projects that combine residential, professional and commercial space and encourage residents to use the mass transit line.

“By establishing these standards, we have built-in flexibility and incentives to encourage reinvestment in the corridor,” said Henderson Principal Planner Gloria Elder, who led the project.

The zone change goes to the City Council on May 5 for final approval.

In recommending that the council approve the proposal, the Planning Commission made one change to the affected area to exclude a small section of industrial land that would have been rezoned to the new standard.

The decision came after warehouse and factory owners on a block of Athol Avenue, between Barrett and Rolly streets, said that if their properties were included, it could hurt their businesses.

Under the new zoning, they would have been grandfathered in and allowed to continue to operate their businesses as long as they had tenants. But if the properties were left vacant for 180 days, they would have lost their grandfather status and been forced to comply with the new zoning standard, which doesn’t allow for industrial operations.

In this economy, one owner said, industrial property sitting vacant for six months is quite possible.

“My property, I feel, is valuable because it’s useful, and it’s useful because it’s industrially zoned,” owner Russell Friend said.

Friend and neighboring business owner William Madan said they aren’t against what the city wants to do on Boulder Highway, but they don’t want to have their businesses jeopardized while the area is redeveloped — a process that could take several years.

“This allows them to do what they want, but protects us if it doesn’t happen,” Madan said.

After hearing the business owners’ arguments, Elder told commissioners that the block where the industrial properties are located could be cut in half, so that the properties facing Boulder Highway are included in the new zoning but the properties facing Athol remain industrial.

It would make sense, she said, because the properties on the other side of Athol are all industrial and aren’t affected by the zone change.

“It does make a logical transition to keep that block industrially zoned,” Elder said.