College Street house will get new use

Growth in the form of more housing development was further green-lighted byClinton’s City Council last week following a second approval of a pair of rezoning requests that will restructure a building on College Street into new dwellings.

The requests were made by Solutions Investments, LLC, whose owner proposed to rezone th property at 707 College St. into fully residential in hopes of turning the front half of the space from an office into housing.

“Mayor Starling, members of City Council, you do have a rezoning request by Solutions Investments, LLC to rezone approximately 0.41 acres at 707 College St. from office and institutional to R8-residential,” Planning and Development Director Mary Rose said during her presentation to the Council . “This was reviewed by the planning board and was unanimously recommended for approval.”

After those opening remarks, Rose dove into what she called the fact finding, which was presented to the planning board.

“The property under consideration contains 0.41 acres or 17,860 square ft,” she began. “The area of the property under consideration for rezoning is currently zoned office and institutional with the rear portion of the property being zoned RA-8 and having a duplex on that rear portion, so this is a property that is split-zoned currently.

“Howard Calhoun has signed the application as the owner and the property is bordered on all sides by RA-8 residential zoning. The proposed parcel meets the square footage requirements of the Clinton Land Development ordinance for the RA-8 residential zoning district. The property has been posted and all property owners within 100 feet have been notified by mail. In Section 7-C of the Clinton Comprehensive Plan, section seven C goals, eight, declares ‘Clinton will consider preservation of residential elements in the decision-making process.’ You do have a zoning consistency statement here for your consideration this evening and staff is here to answer any questions you may have, after Mr. Calhoun makes his presentation.”

Rose’s comments were followed by a public hearing as Calhoun stepped to the podium to discuss his proposed plans for the College Street property and his reasons for requesting the rezoning.

“This property I’ve owned for probably about 15 years or so and we actually run a mental health assessment business in this property,” he said. “I just want you to know that I intend to continue to be a good resident as I’ve been those last 15 years. Because of COVID, a lot of the business that we were running, which was community support, was changed because of that time period. I want to continue to use the property, but I now have more of a need to do residential. Since we’ve already got residential in the back, I’m just here to answer any objections there may be for using that property in the front as residential also. I intend to follow all the rules and regulations there are like I have been doing in the past.”

No residents or members of the community spoke during the hearing concerning the rezoning, however, council members had a few questions of their own.

“Do you have an opinion on how difficult it would be to change this from office to residential or how much work is going to be done, I know it’s currently a doctor’s office,” Mayor Lew Starling inquired.

“Actually, as stated earlier, the back part is already partially residential and the front was a doctor’s office,” Calhoun said. “I don’t if they got full approval, but there’s already a bathroom and kitchen facilities in that back part already operating. So with that said, I don’t foresee it being too big of a problem to change it to full residential, but most of the work would have to be done in the front part.”

Councilman Daniel Ruggles asked Calhoun how they would structure residents coming into the property once rezoned.

“Would you have it where one side would enter from the front and the others from the back side. Just in general, how would you have residents enter between the two side?, Ruggles questioned.”

“Well, you would be able to enter from the front or back, but I would think that the way it is set up we’d maybe want to have two separate ones,” Calhoun answered. “You would have a back entry that has two entrances, the back and there’s a side entry there as well. The front is the same, there’s the front entry and you also have a side entry, so you have four entrances to the property. The front entry also has a handicap entrance and the back does as well.”

The last question included how Calhoun planned to change the space into residential living — apartments or a single family duplex following the rezoning approval.

“I’m planning a duplex just like the one in the back of the property,” Calhoun said. “We have two bedrooms in the back and we hope to have two or three bedrooms in the front, however we can set it up, but we want to at least have two bedrooms and at least two baths in each area of the front.”

After closing the public hearing, council members voted unanimously to approve the rezoning request.

A second public hearing followed the approval, this one also presented by Rose.

“The second request is the same property owner and same property, however, this is a conditional rezoning,” she said. “A conditional zoning request allows the applicant to provide the City Council with a site specific request. So as you asked, would this be single family? No, the conditional zoning request is as follows: The property under consideration, contains 0.93 acres or 40,628 square ft, it was split zoned, but now it is all RA-8 residential because of the decision you just made. Mr. Calhoun has signed the application as the owner and the property is bordered now on all sides by the residential and is RA-8 as well. The applicant is proposing to convert the existing front building into a duplex as he stated in the previous request. There is an existing duplex at the rear of the property so in order to make a conditional zoning request, this request is conditionally zoning the property for multi-family because it is no longer a duplex as it would be four units now.

“This includes two in the back, and then, if he’s approved to make the front building two units, that would be four units, which makes this a conditional zoning request to conditional zoning to RA-8 for multi-family, which is specific to this request.”

Rose further detailed that the proposed parcel met the square footage requirements in the Clinton Land Development ordinance for multi-family which meets their density requirements. She also noted that they reviewed parking for the space and it was more than adequate and also met requirements.

Rose noted that Calhoun would need to meet some additional specifications should he ever chose to change the space back into an office.

“Again, I go back to this is a site specific conditional zoning request for a duplex,” she said. “If he wished to come back and do anything else that is not permitted in the RA-8 district, meaning it is a special use in an RA-8 district, or if he wanted to change the use back to office use, he would have to submit another application, go through this process and come before the planning board and City Council again.

“With conditional zoning, meaning if both parties agree, the applicant and the City Council, conditions can be placed upon the conditional zoning, but both parties have to agree those conditions.”

Council can also request site plans from Calhoun regarding his plans for inside the building.

Starling also brought up concerns about parking and how it would be handled since the property is near the Sampson Arts Council site, and he asked if Calhoun would agree, as part of their approval, to provide a rendering of the exterior and to work with Art Council staff to approve the aesthetics of the parking lot during events.

Calhoun agreed, and the City Council once again unanimously voted in favor of the rezoning request.