City extends moratorium on PUD developments

The city of Whitefish has extended its moratorium on planned unit development overlays that include blending density zoning.

City Council Aug. 15 unanimously passed the moratorium that is an extension of the temporary six-month moratorium it enacted in February, but was set to expire this month. An ad hoc committee is currently working on a rewrite of the PUD regulations.

The move continues the suspension of some forms of new development in the city for at least a year. If the revision of the regulation is completed before the end of one year, the moratorium could be lifted early.

City Council this spring asked for a full rewrite of the regulations, and until that can be completed, it decided a moratorium on some PUDs was necessary. PUDs that do not include blended density zoning will still be allowed to go through the city’s planning process for potential approval.

City Planning Director Dave Taylor said there have been no applications with the city for a development that includes a blended PUD.

A PUD overlay is designed to allow a developer flexibility to respond to environmental characteristics of a site, neighborhood character and the community housing demands. A developer gets increased flexibility and the opportunity to vary standards of the underlying zone, and the city gets some community benefit such as increased critical area buffering, trails or affordable housing.

Currently, most of the PUDs approved over multiple underlying zones have some form of density averaging to determine the maximum allowed density. Each zoning district is assigned a maximum density, so where a PUD spans multiple districts, those densities are averaged based on the area of each district.

The ad hoc committee will bring recommendations for the update to the Planning Board and City Council for approval. Issues to be addressed include density averaging for PUDs, more specific criteria and definitions for public benefit, addressing affordable housing types, greater predictability for adjacent neighborhoods, incentives for cluster developments and open space, and separating commercial and residential PUDs by zoning.