Opinion ID: 71236
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Re-Zoning Ordinances and Moratorium

Text: 5 Before voting on the Site Plan, the City Council eliminated mini-warehouses as a use permitted on C-1A property. At a public meeting attended by Corn's attorney, the City Council passed Ordinance No. 548, eliminating mini-warehouses as a permitted use on C-1 (and consequently C-1A) land. The City Council also passed Ordinance No. 549, re-zoning the Parcel to category B-3, a more restrictive zoning category. Then the City Council voted unanimously to deny approval of the Site Plan. 6 The City Council also passed Ordinance No. 552, imposing a moratorium on the issuance of building permits for C-1 property to allow the Planning and Zoning Board to conduct a study of the City's zoning scheme. In particular, the study was to address the propriety of situating commercially zoned property adjacent to residential property. Originally, the moratorium was to last for 150 days, but it eventually was extended to last almost a year. 7 The record is ambiguous as to whether the moratorium applied to Corn's property for its entire duration. By its terms, Ordinance No. 552 applied to C-1 property; the Parcel, however, was re-zoned B-3 by Ordinance No. 549 within a month of the moratorium's inception. The parties have proceeded on this appeal under the assumption that the moratorium nevertheless applied to the Parcel for its duration and prevented Corn from building anything on the Parcel during that time. It is clear that once the moratorium expired on July 4, 1978, the Parcel's B-3 zoning classification permitted many uses, including the proposed shopping center, though not a mini-warehouse.