Gainesville planners sided with a group of residents Tuesday who want their neighborhood rezoned to block future commercial development.
The Fair Street Area Neighborhood Planning Unit is requesting that the city rezone 129 parcels between the southeast side of Jesse Jewell and E.E. Butler parkways to Neighborhood Conservation.
The planning board voted 4-1 to recommend that the City Council approve the rezoning, which involves more than 100 properties on 12 city streets. The Neighborhood Conservation zoning would freeze the neighborhood’s current zoning and not allow any new commercial interests to establish there.
The Gainesville City Council will consider the measure next month.
Although most of the properties in the area are single-family residences, the area actually is zoned to allow multifamily uses, such as apartments.
That multifamily zoning allows some commercial uses with a special permit.
And although approximately 96 percent of the property owners in the area have agreed to the rezoning effort, a few oppose it.
Two property owners asked the Planning and Appeals Board on Tuesday that their properties, located on Summit and Boone streets, be excluded from the mass rezoning.
Karen and Heath Gayton, who own 502 and 434 Boone St., said they originally purchased the property because of its current zoning.
The couple told the board they plan to combine the two properties to make a parking lot for Church Street Manor Apartments at 710 Jesse Jewell Parkway.
"We paid $3 million for this property," Karen Gayton said. "We did not pay residential, R-1, prices."
Heath Gayton said he understood the residents’ desires, but said he did not want to be a part of it.
"There’s right ways and there’s wrong ways to do things," Heath Gayton said.
Another property owner, Sandra Campbell, also asked that her property be removed from the rezoning. Campbell owns 1033 Summit St. and a nearby pawn shop.
"That would leave me with much less land to further develop into something that the community would appreciate, like a strip center," Campbell said.
But residents said future developments such as strip centers were exactly what they were trying to protect themselves against with the rezoning request.
"This is what we’re concerned about — the encroachment and erosion of the neighborhood," said Summit Street resident James Brooks. "... If you allow these exceptions, you allow another opportunity to encroach more and this neighborhood shrinks, and this is why we came together."
After more than usual questioning, board members sided with the residents.
Board member Dexter Stanley voted against the proposal and board members Connie Rucker and George Hokayem abstained.
The Fair Street Area Neighborhood Planning Unit is the first planning unit of its kind in Gainesville. The unit is what Gainesville’s Special Projects Manager Jessica Tullar called a "citizens-based approach" to city planning.