Panel to vote on Comprehensive Plan

Normally Maryville Planning and Zoning Commission meetings consist of fairly hum-drum stuff. The City Council-appointed panel typically acts on citizen requests for lot splits, land-use variances and zoning changes, as when, for example, someone wants to build a duplex on a block designated for single-family homes.

Larger matters come before the commission as well, including subdivisions and housing complexes, like the 40-unit Southview Townhomes project currently under construction southeast of Walmart.

When such projects, large or small, emerge, the board listens to contractor or landowner proposals, and then makes a recommendation to the City Council, which grants or denies it.

But later this month, the "P&Z," as it is often referred to, will make the final decision on whether the city should adopt a detailed planning and growth blueprint intended to shape Maryville's overall development — commercial, industrial, recreational and residential — for the next 15 to 20 years.

At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at City Hall the commission will convene for a session during which, as required by state statute, it is to decide whether or not to accept a detailed Comprehensive Plan hammered out by city officials and civic leaders over the past two years.

The plan was put together with help from RDG Planning & Design, a consulting firm that received nearly $70,000 for the research and analysis used in drafting the 100-plus page document.

City Manager Greg McDanel said Monday that, in a reversal of usual roles, the P&Z will make the final decision about whether to adopt the plan after receiving input from the council, which has already expressed support for a document described earlier by Mayor Glenn Jonagan as a "home run."

Subsequent revisions to the Comprehensive Plan, however, would follow normal channels, with the council acting to ratify specific P&Z recommendations.

Though not a zoning instrument per se, the plan could ultimately lead to a new city zoning map, and it contains detailed recommendations about what parts of town should contain commercial, industrial and various types of residential development.

In broad terms, the plan reinforces existing trends that have already led to new residential development in central, northeast and southwest Maryville; commercial enterprise downtown and along the South Main corridor; and industrial growth to the south and east.

The new plan is separate from another RDG-drafted proposal, since passed as a series of ordinances, that did, in fact, alter residential zoning regulations in an attempt to protect traditional single-family neighborhoods to the north and south of Northwest Missouri State University while encouraging higher-density development east of campus.

In contrast to those carefully targeted changes, the Comprehensive plan is just that — comprehensive, and, if approved, will guide both City Hall and private developers for years to come in terms of what can be built where.

Recommendations set forth in the plan call for such things as improved pedestrian access and east-west traffic flow along the South Main strip and enhancing downtown with a "Library Square," a new community theater and a landscaped "promenade."

Another project advocated by the Comprehensive Plan is already moving forward: an initiative to improve the Fourth Street corridor between downtown and the Northwest campus with landscaping, a new sidewalk and pedestrian trail, decorative masonry and vintage-style street lights.

McDanel has described the effort as well aligned with the Comprehensive Plan, and said that having such a plan in place will make it easier to obtain significant grant funding to help cover the estimated $1.5 million construction cost.