Overview

The City of Manitowoc wants to hear from community members about what they would like to see explored in the zoning code update. The recent Comprehensive Plan Update included the following vision statement:

Vision: The City of Manitowoc will support, encourage, and integrate residential, manufacturing, commercial, cultural, and recreational communities for our citizens and visitors, with a special emphasis on our lakefront, river corridor, and downtown. Manitowoc strives to be a welcoming, well-connected, culturally diverse, and economically vibrant lakefront community that values its irreplaceable natural resources; prioritizes high quality and equity in its life, work, and economic opportunities; builds on its solid foundation of legacy corporations and innovative green businesses; embraces our arts, culture, waterfronts, recreation, and maritime history to enhance living and tourism; and emphasizes the health, wellness, and safety of all who live and visit here.

The Comprehensive Plan will provide a vision for future growth and development in and around the city and recommend appropriate types of land use for specific areas in and around the City.

This survey is intended to build on the vision in the Comprehensive Plan and implement the vision in the future development of the City. Zoning determines what is allowed to be developed on all properties within the City. It determines what can happen, where, and how big or small buildings and land uses can be. The zoning code organizes the city into neighborhoods, downtown, commercial corridors, industrial areas, and more. The code determines what is allowed to mix and what must stay separate.

Please take 8-10 minutes to consider the questions in this survey and provide your input. Most questions are optional, and you can skip questions you don’t want to provide an answer for.

Key Terms

Below is a list of key terms that are used in the community survey. There may be concepts described in the survey that you are unfamiliar with.

Please use this list of key terms as a resource to learn more about some of the ideas presented in the survey:

A second, smaller home on a residential property. They can be attached to the main home, located above a garage, or placed in the backyard.

The cost and affordability of housing is brought up multiple times throughout the survey. There are many ways of defining affordable housing in different contexts.

In this survey, housing affordability refers to the general affordability of all housing for all people, not just housing that is subsidized or income-restricted by the local, state, or federal government.

"Affordable housing" that is subsidized by governments and income-restricted is typically controlled by policies other than zoning, and this zoning update will have minimal impact on government subsidized and income-restricted housing.

For the purposes of a zoning code, architectural design refers to details of a building or structure that are visible to the public. This can include one or more of the following:

Exterior materials
Building proportions, height, and width
Window design
Roof shape
The appearance of utilities, gutters, mechanical structures, gas meters, etc.
Locations of doors and entryways
Canopies and awnings
Patterns and designs on the facade

An architectural review is a review by the local government of these design elements to determine whether a new building can be developed.

For the purposes of the zoning code, the difference between condos and apartments is that condos are owned and apartments are rented.

While condos and apartments are typically multi-family buildings, they can also be single family, duplex, or townhomes.

Density refers to the number of homes on an area of land. If you add more homes to a property, but do not increase the size of that property, then it has become denser.

Zoning codes often navigate issues of density by considering the trade-offs associated with it. More homes on the same amount of land can preserve the natural environment from being demolished for homes that are more spread out (known as sprawl). More density also increases the property tax base of an area without requiring more infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, and sewers.

On the other hand, too much density can cause concerns about overcrowding and congestion. Managing density is an ongoing responsibility of local governments.

Any construction on a property. A development occurs on a property where no construction has occurred before. A redevelopment occurs when there is existing construction that needs to be demolished, rehabbed, or added to. All developments in Manitowoc are subject to the rules of the zoning code.

A duplex is two homes, apartments, or condos connected in the same structure. They can be side-by-side or one above the other.

Sometimes a duplex is called a twinhome or townhome if they are side-by-side or a two-flat if one is above the other. For the purposes of this survey, there are minimal differences between these types of housing.

Economic development is any program, policy or activity that seeks to improve the economic well-being and quality of life for a community. This looks different in every community, but the result can be things like new investments in jobs, infrastructure, local businesses, entrepreneurship, tourism, and more.

Some cities choose to offer bonuses for height and density in exchange for going above and beyond in the design and construction of a building.

Receiving a bonus means a developer can build more than they would typically be allowed on a given property. In exchange, they would be asked to provide things such as reduced prices for new homes, enhanced architectural design, providing public parks and infrastructure, and/or reducing the environmental impact of the building.

Bonuses can be a strong negotiating tool by local governments to incentivize developers to provide higher quality buildings.

Zoning codes often require certain types of high-intensity development, especially industrial and large-scale commercial buildings to include landscape buffers to reduce their impacts on nearby buildings and residents. This can include trees, bushes, fences, walls, and constructed hills (called berms) to reduce noise and visual impacts.

Lot size refers to the size of the piece of property a development is built on. Lot sizes can range from a fraction of an acre to several acres. Some questions on the survey ask about reducing minimum lot sizes to reduce the cost of land when constructing a new building.

The zoning code currently requires most new developments (except non-residential development downtown) to include parking for the users of the development. This is typically in the form of a surface parking lot or a garage.

The current minimum parking requirements in Manitowoc can be found in Section 15.430 of the municipal code

Property tax base refers to the amount of tax revenues generated by homes, businesses, and industries that pay taxes to the local government. By increasing the amount and/or value of homes, businesses, and industries in a community, the overall property tax revenue increases. This increase is balanced by an increase in the cost of providing services to those homes, businesses, and industries. Balancing these revenues and costs is a primary function of local government.

Public hearings are meetings held by the local government for various reasons, including to review development applications.

While the State requires a minimum number of public hearings for certain important developments, some local governments choose to increase the number of public hearings to give more opportunities for the public to weigh in on new projects. However, the trade off is that more public meetings can delay new developments and lead to increased costs.

Resiliency refers to the ability of people, places, and systems to withstand hardship, emergency, and disaster. This can include shocks such as economic downturn, natural disasters, social unrest, dangerous diseases, and more.

Planning for resiliency can look like emergency preparedness, requiring greater durability and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure to withstand extreme weather, or diversifying the local economy to avoid relying too heavily on one industry.

While zoning cannot achieve resiliency alone, it can be a useful tool to promote some practices to improve our abilities to withstand unexpected events.

Retail is a type of business establishment that sells goods to the public. Most retail stores allow anyone from the public to walk in and purchase goods such as a restaurant, grocery store, cafe, bookstore, gas station, or bar.

Non-retail businesses may require customers to make appointments, or they may not be accessible to the public at all such as offices, some medical services, construction supply companies, and business-to-business operations.

A good rule-of-thumb is: if you can walk in from the street, it's probably retail.

This refers to the act of increasing the level of social and economic activity in an area. The term literally means "to give life" to an area that may be lacking in the amount of activity occurring today.

A setback is a standard term used in most zoning codes defining how far away a building must be from a property line. A front setback creates a front yard. A side setback creates a side yard. A rear setback creates a backyard. Setbacks are also commonly referred to as "yards."

A new building can usually be spaced further than the required setback, but not less than the minimum. In rare cases, there are maximum setbacks - but Manitowoc does not have any maximum setbacks.

A single family home is a house or structure that has one family or household living in it. This is the term used in zoning codes to refer to "traditional" homes.

Single family homes exist in contrast to multi-family homes (aka apartments or condos).

In between single family and multi-family homes, there are options such as townhomes and duplexes that combine some qualities of both single family and multi-family.

Townhomes are multiple single family homes that are connected side-by-side with shared side walls and do not have yards between the homes. They do have front yards and back yards.

Where there are only two townhomes, they can sometimes be called a twinhome or a duplex. For the purposes of this survey, there are minimal differences between these types of housing.

Urban agriculture refers to growing food in cities. This is a growing practice that can happen outdoors or indoors. Urban agriculture can provide local access to fresh, healthy foods and jobs compared to shipping fresh produce from across the globe.

City of Manitowoc Zoning Update

City of Manitowoc Zoning Update

Overview