Three Maplewood houses on a residential street, that have been lived in as single family residences for up to a hundred years, were zoned community business, their owners were recently surprised to discover.
The planning and zoning commission on Tuesday complied with the owners’ requests to rezone the houses back to residential. They said insurance companies wouldn’t insure the homes, being zoned commercial.
The houses, at 3368 Oxford, and 2645, 2647 and 2649 Lyle Avenue, are near Manchester Road. Public Works Director Anthony Traxler said they were zoned commercial around 1980 to fix a problem that’s all over Maplewood — shallow lot depth. He said it’s Maplewood’s Achilles heel for commercial properties.
He said his only issue with rezoning them back to residential is that they back up to commercial properties – White Castle and other businesses on the corner of Manchester and Big Bend. He said if at any time someone were interested in developing the entire corner, including the houses, it would likely be done as a planned unit development (PUD), not as individual properties.
Commission member Pickett Lema said she was concerned about properties flip-flopping back and forth between commercial and residential, and was the only no vote.