MARGATE – After three years of planning and discussions, the Board of Commissioners June 21 introduced an ordinance that makes major changes to the city’s zoning laws.
The ordinance passed first reading and will be sent to the Planning Board for review and recommendation. If the Planning Board returns it to the commission without any major changes, a public hearing on the ordinance will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 5 at Historic City Hall.
“This represents a lot of work and effort. It’s still not quite done, but this is the right step,” said Solicitor John Scott Abbott, who prepared the ordinance.
The ordinance as written could be “tweaked” by the planning board when it reviews it at its meeting 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 28, Abbott said.
The proposed zoning map shows zoning districts that have been added or deleted, he said.
According to city Planner and Zoning Officer Roger McLarnon, key provisions include:
· Creation of a resort hotel overlay zone along the oceanfront from the beach to Atlantic Avenue
· Creation Washington Avenue pedestrian corridor from Ventnor Avenue to Monmouth Avenue
· Eliminating the Geo Zone, which is government owned property, and revising it to reflect the actual uses currently in the zone, such as schools, institutions or residential housing
· Creating a uniform bayfront district
· Combining areas along Ventnor Avenue near the new mini-golf course area into a C-2 zone to make “a nice transition” to the Central Business District zone
· And, “eliminating requirements that did not make sense that have been in place for a while,” McLarnon said.
Commissioner John Amodeo said the changes are a result of the Master Plan review, which was funded with a resiliency grant received following Hurricane Sandy. Municipalities are required to review their master plan every 10-15 years. The last one was approved in 2004 and updated in 2006. The new Master Plan was prepared by Remington, Vernick and Walberg engineers and adopted by the Planning Board on March 20, 2017.
“This process was in the works with a lot of stakeholders involved in the decisions and into the actual recommendations from Master Plan, whether it be business community, professional community or faith-based community,” Amodeo said. “All those meetings occurred more than two-and-a-half years ago and the culmination is a lot of these recommendations with our Master Plan Review Committee.”
The ordinance includes new definitions of uses not previously included in the city’s existing zoning ordinance, including adult family, hospice and daycare homes, commercial parking lots and resort hotels.
Amherst Avenue resident Ed Berger asked if there is currently a proposal build a hotel on the beach.
“It’s all recommended by the Master Plan. We are trying to make things available if it ever comes up,” Mayor Michael Becker said.
Berger called it a “significant change in posture.”
“It’s a double-edged sword. I’d love to see a bigger pool of 12-month-out-of-the-year transients coming in and out of the city to feed businesses, but on the other hand the residential community aspect of Margate is something that has made it what it is today. It will be a very difficult balance to try and strike,” Berger said.
Additionally, Berger said he believed paid parking was not allowed in the city.
McLarnon said commercial parking was “inferred” as a permitted use in the commercial districts.
“Here we’re just defining it,” McLarnon said.
Also, the board introduced an ordinance requiring house numbers that are clearly visible from the street for emergency purposes.
It also introduced an ordinance setting the minimum finished elevation of bulkheads at 8 feet along the bayfront, canals and lagoons and 13 feet on the beachfront.
