Fiscal Note
No City appropriation required.
Title
Creating Section 28.130 and Section 28.151 and amending Sections 28.151, 28.061, 28.072 and 28.082 of the Madison General Ordinances and to amend the definition of “Use, Accessory” create a new use category, “Use, Incidental” and create a new use “Incidental Alcohol Sales.”
Body
DRAFTER'S ANALYSIS: This ordinance creates a new category of land use known as Incidental Uses.
The Zoning Code currently defines Principal Use as the “main use of land or buildings as distinguished from a subordinate or accessory use.” The Zoning Code also allows for accessory uses, which are defined as uses “on the same lot with, and of a nature customarily incidental and subordinate to, the principal use or structure and serving the occupants of the principal use or structure.” Thus, the Zoning Code contemplates that a building or structure will contain a single principal use and may contain accessory uses that customarily go with that principal use. While mixed-use districts allow multiple principal uses on a single property or in a single building, those uses must be in separate units on the land or in the building and thus are treated similarly to single use properties with respect to the classification of principal and accessory uses.
This scheme matches the historical use of properties: each piece of land or structure is used for a principal - single - purpose perhaps accompanied by accessory uses that are customarily associated with that principal use. In recent times, staff has seen an increase in requests of property owners to conduct multiple uses on a land or in a structure that may not customarily go hand-in-hand. Up to this point, Staff has approved such requests by approving multiple principal uses on the same property. However, doing this runs counter to the basic idea of a principal use as being the “main use” of the property. In other words, by definition, a property cannot have more than one principal ...
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