City Leaders Exploring Zoning Options | Video

Evan Kruegel | 9/20/2012

Williston`s Planning and Zoning Commission has been busy lately, as they try to figure out the smartest way to add additional housing to the city. Earlier this week they recommended several zoning changes to the city commission.

One noticeable recommendation involves a large area of land on 42nd street in the Northwest corner of city limits. The change would re-zone rural residential properties into sites that could be developed as multi-family or townhouse style homes.

"Part of the reason why I think we`re seeing high density, which means multi-family apartments, is that the lands are so expensive. So to get that cost back, they have to put more apartments on a smaller site to recoup their cost and expense into the project,” aaid City Commissioner Tate Cymbaluk.

Cymbaluk says his commission has to make these decisions very carefully, to make sure the city has an equal balance of housing options.

"The general issue is that we have to be careful in the city of where we put all these apartments. You don`t want to put apartments right in the middle of a single family residential area. In a perfect world, you`d see a traditional buffer of commercial, to multi-family, to condos, townhouses and then single family. However, we don`t have the large open spaces within city limits to allow that developer to fulfill that gap."

Cymbaluk expects between 1,200 and 1,500 apartments will be permitted inside city limits within the next year.

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