Sedona City Council unanimously approved Paul Kaiser and Susan Herman’s Kaiser-Herman Family Trust requests for a zone change for their 0.31-acre parcel Arts’n’One. It currently houses five artist studios at 110 Oak Creek Blvd., located south of Oak Creek Water Co., and approximately 550 feet south of State Route 89A.
“We are applying for the [mixed-use] so we can continue to do light commercial businesses out of the building that conforms to what would work well with the neighborhood, and possibly make some small apartment residents out of the same building,” Kaiser said to council. “Potentially, if we had employees that we wanted to provide housing for, we [could] convert the building.”
The approved changes during council’s Feb. 10 meeting include a rezoning from Special Use, an obsolete zoning district, to an M1 Mixed-Use Neighborhood designation. Council also approve a Minor Community Plan Amendment redesignating the property on the City’s Future Land Use Map from Residential to Mixed-Use.
Kaiser said the project represents the culmination of a 25-year transformation of the property, which originally operated as a bronze-casting foundry under a non-conforming use designation.
“When we did our zone change many years ago, we put a lot of money into the property. We took a dilapidated old brown cinder block building and brought it up to [the] design code of Sedona,” Kaiser said,
Under the new Mixed-Use Neighborhood zoning, a conditional use permit will also be required for approval for the existing manufacturing use to remain.
The building’s existing infrastructure with rooms that already have their own access and electric meters will allow for conversion with simple interior wall changes Kaiser said.
“Any changes would be very simple, as we can provide four living spaces, or a non-invasive commercial use, with some additional apartments in the same building by simply just changing some interior walls,” Kaiser said.
City Manager Anette Spickard and the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of both changes following the commission’s Jan. 6 meeting, during which it also voted 5-0 to recommend approval. Commissioner Harmony Walker was absent and the commission has one vacancy.
City staff received two written public comments with one expressing support for the mixed-use zoning designation and one raising concerns about the potential for short-term rentals.
“The only thing that anybody’s objected to is the possibility of short-term rentals, which we have no intention of doing. I believe in our commitment; it’s at least 50 years or longer [before] anybody can use it for short-term rentals, so that is not an issue,” Kaiser said.
