As we’ve reported the Summit County Council on Wednesday hosted an introduction for a proposed Hoytsville Village Overlay. Council member Doug Clyde says it is a highly unique process that lets property owners’ band together to work out a Master Plan for their land.
The proposed Overlay is comprised of 1,100 acres, under 28 owners. Clyde said its adjacent to Coalville, with parts of it set close to the Interstate.
The proposal is for a rezone, and in considering it, the council has to look at the public health, safety and welfare.
“We do have our own lists of what our objectives are," Clyde explained. "They include things like environmental stewardship, water quality, traffic reduction, improvements to transportation and affordable housing. Those are sort of our top 10 list. So, what I was telling those people or trying to explain to the audience this process is not one by which the landowner just gets to come in and say, I want to do the thing that's going to make me the most money. They have to come in and say this is a good and balanced plan that provides community benefit while at the same time reflects good land use.”
He said the landowners haven’t defined yet what the rezoning or possible densities would be. But to get approval from the Council, they will have to show community benefits.
“It may involve things such as high-density development," Clyde continued. "Undoubtedly, they'll be an affordable housing component to it. There will be a lot of land uses there that are not otherwise covered by our existing zoning. Our existing zoning primarily is just simply almost always about rural residential single family dwelling. We would expect a continuum of uses, everything from protection of critical lands and open space to single family dwellings to perhaps even apartment complexes.”
Clyde said this is not a sequel to last year’s unsuccessful effort to make Hoytsville a town.
“While some of the motivation of the landowners may be the same, I don't think that this in anyway is a response to that," Clyde said. "We put this process into place when we revise the zoning which is now about two years old. So, that predated the attempt of Hoytsville to incorporate. They're really very separate items and that was actually one of the confusions, I think, among the public last night.”
