Three Years Later: Centerville Rezoning Still Causing Ripples
CENTERVILLE - Three years ago, Mayor Mary Capra envisioned “the biggest change to the community in the past 150 years” as the city adopted its Master Plan and Development Guidelines for the city’s Downtown Redevelopment Plan.
The plan, which emerged from the work of a community task force, proposed sweeping changes to an eight-block area in the historic heart of the city.
The largely residential area was rezoned to Mixed Use.
State grants began flowing in. Architectural standards were developed and adopted.
A partnership was formed between the city and Beard Group, the developer selected for the project.
City officials worked closely with Anoka County on the reconstruction of Main Street.
And then the economy went belly up.
When the recession comes to an end, Centerville leaders are hopeful that their planning may yet bear fruit in the realization of the city’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan, which established a goal of “sustaining a population above 5,000.”
But in the meantime?
Most of the grant money has had to be returned, unspent. Bond payments for the Main Street improvements will be paid out of the tax levy for the foreseeable future instead of from TIF District proceeds.
For the owners of the 40 or so nonconforming residences in that area, the plans they may have had to expand their homes to meet the needs of their growing families are now prohibited under zoning rules.
For others, the purchase off ers that were promised never arrived.
The silver lining to this economic cloud is that the City of Centerville was several years behind other communities in its pursuit of a revitalized, pedestrian-friendly downtown.
Unlike other cities in Anoka County where local street and utility improvements were already in the ground before development fizzled, Centerville citizens were not left to pay a hefty infrastructure bill.
“We didn’t dive in head first and say, ‘Let’s build it, and they will come,’” Council Member Ben Fehrenbacher told The Citizen.
Childhood Home, Lifelong Dreams
MaryBeth Wasiloski (Wus-luh-ski), 30, was raised in the home on Heritage Street where she now lives with her husband and two young daughters. “There’s a lot of history in this house,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I always told my parents I was going to live here.”
That dream came true in 2006. It wasn’t long, however, before they heard about the city’s plans to build townhomes where their home, originally built by the La- Motte family in 1953, now stands.
“I just sat on the steps and cried,” Wasiloski, who received her fi rst communion at St. Genevieve’s one block away, told The Citizen.
“We want to put a full front porch on the front of our house, maybe a 3- season porch on the back,” she said. “We have blueprints that my dad drew up before he passed. A house is a house: [but] it takes a family and many years to create a home.”
Her husband, Bryce, concurs. “Th is whole idea of tearing our property down and building something else makes no sense to us,” he said.
The Housing Bubble Bursts
January 11, 2007 was a red-letter day for 26-year-old Ryan Lewellen. Th at was the day he became the new owner of his very fi rst home, a 12- year-old house on Heritage Street.
“The housing bubble was already bursting,” Lewellen said. “I thought I was getting in at a fairly good time.”
It was also the day the city adopted its downtown redevelopment plan. The year before, Lewellen’s neighborhood had been rezoned from largely residential to mixeduse, making each single-family residence a nonconforming use.
Lewellen said he was surprised to find that the new design guidelines for his block, guided for multifamily units, limited him to a 100-square-foot deck. “I would have liked it to be bigger,” he said.
Lewellen’s sales job may soon require him to put his home at 1721 Heritage Street on the market. He is concerned that the city’s zoning rules will make his property less attractive to buyers. That may be: the last “arms-length” sale—that is, a sale between two disinterested parties—of residential property to occur in the rezoned area occurred on July 20, 2007.
Tom Neisius is disappointed that nothing is happening in his neighborhood: he was poised to sell his property at 7048 Progress Road to Beard Group with the intention of rebuilding in the area.
If forced to stay in his 94- year-old home, Neisius said, he would like to reconstruct his garage and move it back away from the road.
Richard (Dick) Kinning, 79, has lived at 7059 Progress Road for 53 years.
Kinning saw the downtown project as an opportunity for him to continue to live in Centerville while downsizing to “something easier to care for.” He told The Citizen that he would like to see more housing choices available for Centerville retirees.
“Trapped and Cheated”
When Margaret Gainsley bought her 1-1/2-story 1946-vintage home at 1724 Heritage Street in 2005, she was a single mother with two children. “I like older homes,” the engineering document specialist said. “I could have purchased a split-entry house for $320,000 or I could buy this older home with a lot of land for $220,000.”
She met and married Olaf Lee two years later.
Together, the Lees’ blended family numbered seven. The couple needed more elbow room, and they considered selling. In consulting a realtor, the news wasn’t good: the recommended sale price wouldn’t begin to pay off the mortgage, Margaret, now 40, said.
“How am I supposed to sell my property, when [the city] is telling the community that this area is blighted?” she asked. The couple then hoped to add on a great room, where the family could all be together. But the city’s newly zoning code will no longer allow the Lees to expand the use of their home.
When cities adopt new zoning rules for an area, City Administrator Dallas Larson told The Citizen, it doesn’t make sense for the city to allow the nonconforming uses within that area to grow.
“Buying property with much more investment [makes] redevelopment that much more difficult,” he said.
But the city has not been unresponsive to the plight of residents who live in the redevelopment area, he added. “In direct response to [residents’] concerns, the City Council and the Planning Commission did respond and loosen [the zoning code] up a little bit (City Code Chapter 156, Section 156.101, amended July 26, 2006).”
New decks, swimming pools, tool sheds and fences are now allowed “to a limited degree,” Larson said. And maintenance of nonconforming structures can continue.
“They can put on new siding, a new roof.”
But there is a limit. “Specifically,” Larson said, “you can’t expand the nonconformity, so if you had a threebedroom home, you can’t add a fourth bedroom, you can’t add a story.”
“And that’s not fair,” Lee says. But “fair” and “legal” are two diff erent things.
The State of Minnesota gives statutory cities their powers to rezone property and plan for growth. Nevertheless, the legislature continues to refine the powers of cities; in recent years, the state has eased restrictions on residential nonconformities.
In 2004, Statute §462.357 Subd. 1(e)(2)(b) was changed. Now, cities are now specifi cally permitted to allow nonconformities to expand. Further, statute now allows the owners of nonconforming structures destroyed by “fire or other peril” to rebuild (§462.357 Subd. 1) as long as a building permit is applied for within 180 days of the event.
Regardless of the changes in statute, until the city allows them to meet the housing needs of their family, the Lees say they feel trapped.
“They’re cheating us out of time,” Margaret Lee said.
“Where we want to spend our money, we can’t. Is it the role of government to control your standard of living?”
But Mayor Mary Capra doesn’t see it that way. She said allowing nonconforming uses to expand would cost taxpayers money in the long run. “We also need to look out for the rest of the community, and that’s my role,” she said.
“We’re not trying to push anybody out. I understand the hardship this causes.”
Focus on Affordable Housing
Three years later, Beard Group has yet to complete a property purchase. The city, however, has acquired additional land adjacent to the old public works site west of Centerville Road.
Capra reports that the city is “still progressing” with the project, and is now focused on building affordable housing. “We’re still looking for additional funding to make that happen,” she said.
Meanwhile, City Council Member Linda Broussard Vickers admits that she is thinking about the rezoning impacts on area residents.
“There was a good plan or a vision,” she said. “[But] the vision was always bigger than I thought we could achieve in our town in a short time.”
Last month, Broussard Vickers requested that the council address the rezoning issue in a workshop setting.
“It’s an acknowledgement that it’s time to talk about it,” she said.
The City Council has scheduled its 2010 goal-setting workshop at City Hall on Feb. 10 (following its regular meeting), where priorities for the coming year will be identified. In addition to the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, sidewalks and nonconforming uses will likely be discussed, Mayor Capra said.