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County plan seeks updated zoning regulations for economic growth

SUN-GAZETTE FILE PHOTOS Above, Herman and Luther’s on Route 87 in Montoursville undergoes renovations before becoming the popular venue for weddings and other events that it is today. The land use chapter of the county’s comprehensive plan includes many suggestions and projects that would update municipal zoning ordinances and even allow more agricultural landowners to turn their outbuildings into event venues.

The Lycoming County comprehensive plan includes land use regulations and enforcement as its fifth chapter, which the county planning department reviewed with the commissioners this past week.

John Lavelle, development services supervisor, said current land use regulations, or zoning regulations, and enforcement “do not consistently and adequately meet community visions and respond to changing conditions.”

Lycoming County is one of the few counties in the state in which every municipality has a zoning ordinance. Of the 52 municipalities, 21 are members of the County Zoning Partnership, he said.

There are no “cookie-cutter” regulations that can be enforced countywide, but instead municipalities need to ensure they are enforcing zoning ordinances that are compatible with their individual assets, he said.

Some municipalities are better suited for certain types of zoning.

“We don’t have to zone every municipality with every use under the sun,” Lavelle said.

Zoning shapes communities, affecting where people live, work and play, he added.

“It’s a lot, and it’s nuanced. It’s a complex conversation,” said Kim Wheeler, deputy director of planning. “Land use is important to everyone because everyone lives next door to something.”

Going forward, the planning department suggests that municipalities routinely review their regulations by asking the following questions of their ordinances:

• Do they protect local resources such as their community’s character?

• Do they coordinate new development with existing or planned infrastructure and utilities?

• Should they be updated due to new legislation or the development of new uses? For example, natural gas development, expansion of gambling or the legalization of medical marijuana.

• How can they be updated to positively impact the community?

To further address those issues, projects included in the zoning chapter of the plan are establishing the framework for a standard zoning review process and ensuring adequate land use education and training.

Areas of particular concern include the Route 15 corridor, from South Williamsport to the county landfill in Montgomery, and the Lycoming Mall, Lavelle said.

“Since the corridor has the potential to experience an increase in development in the coming years, it is important to plan for suitable types, locations and densities of development,” he said. “Careful planning will allow these municipalities to capitalize on economic potential while also preserving quality of life and local character.”

A large factor in how development will swing in the corridor is how development of the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway affects traffic there, he said. The planning department is pursuing funding to perform a traffic impact study. It also is developing a Route 15 Gateway Corridor Masterplan as part of the recently adopted Route 15 South Multi-Municipal Comprehensive Plan.

“Right now, all we have are assumptions,” Lavelle said. “The resultant impact is something of a concern. There’s a lot of movement in the Route 15 corridor. What kind of traffic is going to be drawn away from that area?”

In terms of brick and mortar retail, the Lycoming Mall is following national trends, Lavelle said.

“I think a lot of times we miss the national trends. We’re insulated in some ways,” he said. “But this one we’re definitely seeing.”

Three anchor stores — Macy’s, Sears and JC Penney — have closed or announced their intentions to close within the past year. In addition, Toys ‘R’ Us is not only closing its Muncy location near the mall, but all of its stores nationwide.

Lavelle said real estate experts believe as many as 15 percent of the 1,500 remaining malls in the country may close within the next decade “as the market corrects for over saturation and the structural changes occurring within the industry.”

He added that, although it may be easy to blame e-commerce, or online shopping, for the decline in brick and mortar businesses, that sector grew only to about 8.5 percent of the total retail market share by the first quarter of 2017, according to the Census.

“We have changing preferences in how we want to spend our money. We don’t want to go to the mall. And the other thing is people don’t have, as a nation, as much disposable income. It’s a bunch of different things that are all coming together to shrink the retail market,” Lavelle said. “We need to look into how we can positively affect the mall. What kind of uses might be successful for a structure like that and help have sustainable development in the long run?”

The county intends to explore re-use opportunities for vacant commercial and industrial properties, he said.

One of the ways the county is working to update its zoning regulations is to allow agricultural land owners to have small commercial businesses on their properties, such as shops in which to sell the goods they produce, Lavelle said. Another is to allow those land owners to turn certain buildings into event venues, he added.

An example of that would be Herman and Luther’s, a barn renovated to accommodate weddings and other special events on Route 87.

“Developing regulations and enforcing them is really part of helping communities adapt to changing visions — what they want to see their community become and what they want to protect against,” Wheeler said. “The regulatory aspect is what helps them with that, but it’s not without a vision. They need to understand what they want their community to be and then the regulatory tools can help make that happen.”

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