Opinion ID: 1195188
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: PUDs and Zoning

Text: Haggen argues the city council's decision to approve the PUD, despite its apparent incompatibility with the underlying R-2A zone, was correct because MVMC 17.69.010 states the PUD is an overlay zone requiring a rezone and because the comprehensive plan requires rezoning through the PUD process. Haggen interprets the need for rezoning to imply the underlying zoning is immaterial to the land use analysis and the rezone is merely a reversionary zone should the PUD not be constructed. The trial court did not agree. It looked to the underlying R-2A zone, and held the commercial PUD could not be constructed in a R-2A zone because only those uses permitted in the underlying zone are permitted in the PUD and no commercial uses are permitted in a R-2A zone. Haggen's interpretation of Mount Vernon's zoning regulations and Washington case law is not correct. The legal effect of approving a planned unit development is an act of rezoning. Lutz v. City of Longview, 83 Wash.2d 566, 568-69, 520 P.2d 1374 (1974). The following general rules apply to rezone applications: (1) there is no presumption of validity favoring the action of rezoning; (2) the proponents of the rezone have the burden of proof in demonstrating that conditions have changed since the original zoning; and (3) the rezone must bear a substantial relationship to the public health, safety, morals, or welfare. Parkridge v. City of Seattle, 89 Wash.2d 454, 462, 573 P.2d 359 (1978). Haggen agrees the approval of a PUD is an act of rezoning, but Haggen has failed to demonstrate how conditions have changed to warrant a rezone. The record does not indicate and the trial court did not find this area had become a commercial or business area. Therefore, we will not address the issue of whether conditions have changed. Haggen argued to this court, for the first time, the city council could have fixed the problem with the R-2A zoning and avoided the time spent in court by retaining Skagit County's original commercial zoning on the site. As we noted in Lutz, in certain circumstances, the approval of a planned unit development may constitute spot zoning. Lutz, 83 Wash.2d at 573-74, 520 P.2d 1374. Spot zoning is a zoning action by which a smaller area is singled out of a larger area or district and specially zoned for a use classification totally different from, and inconsistent with, the classification of surrounding land and not in accordance with the comprehensive plan. Lutz, 83 Wash.2d at 573-74, 520 P.2d 1374 (citing Smith v. Skagit County, 75 Wash.2d 715, 743, 453 P.2d 832 (1969)). The main inquiry is whether the zoning action bears a substantial relationship to the general welfare of the affected community. Save a Neighborhood Env't v. City of Seattle, 101 Wash.2d 280, 286, 676 P.2d 1006 (1984). Professor Richard L. Settle wrote in Washington Land Use and Environmental Law and Practice, The vice of spot zoning is not the differential regulation of adjacent land but the lack of public interest justification for such discrimination. Where differential zoning merely accommodates some private interest and bears no rational relationship to promoting legitimate public interest, it is arbitrary and capricious and hence spot zoning. Richard L. Settle, Washington Land Use and Environmental Law and Practice § 2.11(c) (1983) (footnotes omitted). Spot zoning emphasizes why the planned unit development does not trump underlying zoning; if a planned unit development can be placed at any location within a city regardless of the underlying or surrounding zoning, as Haggen argues, it might raise issues of spot zoning and it might undermine the overall zoning plan. Planned unit developments allow for flexibility in planning, in design, or in density. They do not permit ad hoc land use decisions merely because a developer has decided to employ the PUD process. The commercial use proposed by Haggen is inconsistent with, and distinctly different from, the surrounding neighborhood zoning. As this court stated in Lutz: [T]he PUD achieves flexibility by permitting specific modifications of the customary zoning standards as applied to a particular parcel. The developer is not given carte blanche authority to make any use which would be permitted under traditional zoning. Lutz, 83 Wash.2d at 568, 520 P.2d 1374. The PUD process does not override underlying zones, nor does a PUD trump specific zoning regulations.