Chamber Advocacy

Mayor & City Council Consider Downzoning Parts of Flagstaff: Chamber Advises Proposal to Create “Neighborhood Community” Zone is Bad Planning & Bad Policy

On August 25, the Flagstaff Mayor and Council by a 4 – 3 voice recommendation directed City Staff to not move forward at this time with a massive downzoning of neighborhoods in Flagstaff. City Community Development staff, specifically, City Zoning Code Administrator, Dan Symer, had worked for years to find a way to reduce building heights in specific parts of town, and then presented the staff solution, a Neighborhood Commercial overlay zone, which would downzone private property from 60’ to 45’ in Southside, North End and Sunnyside (Fourth Street) neighborhoods. The problem with this idea/proposal is two-fold. First, it’s bad public policy. The Chamber offered in public comment to Mayor, Council and City Staff that reducing building heights in the targeted neighborhoods was a violation of Arizona’s Prop 207 law, and would expose the City of Flagstaff and Flagstaff taxpayers to tens of millions in private property rights claims. Arizona’s voter-approved Prop 207 law, robustly supported by the Arizona courts, requires municipalities to compensate private property owners when municipalities implement new zoning restrictions that reduce a private property owners current zoning. Essentially, the City’s downzoning would leave upwards of 1,000 private property owners (residential and commercial) with reduced zoning, thus exposing the City to hundreds or more claims for private property rights losses. The second problem is the action is bad planning. If the City proceeded, the City could and would likely, in the face of legal challenges, grant back the original zoning, which makes the situation worse, as now theses neighborhoods would be checkerboarded with staggered development rights. Worse, just a few years ago, the community walked through millions of dollars of “charettes” on who Flagstaff should be, and it was determined, in order to meet sustainability goals of less car trips in town, we would encourage development infill, with housing density, more units and less cars. The City’s downzoning action drives away infill development leaving us with more urban sprawl. Finally, after working 20+ years to achieve federal dollars to construct the Rio de Flag flood control project, monies which arrived to Flagstaff in February 2020, (the Greater Flagstaff Chamber supported throughout), this action would be a complete affront to all those Southside Flagstaff property owners whose properties will now be off the 100-year flood plain. One of the important reasons to achieve the $50M in federal grant monies to construct the Rio de Flag project was to spur much-needed reinvestment in the Southside neighborhood. Flagstaff’s Mayor and Council may continue to entertain the notion of downzoning Flagstaff neighborhoods in the urban core, but in the name of private property rights, community reinvestment and housing affordability, the Chamber will stand opposed.