Legacy housing project rezoning fails to get enough votes from Mason City council

MASON CITY — The second reading of a zoning change for a proposed three-story housing development near the Legacy Golf Course at the Nineteen did not get the required super-majority approval by the Mason City City Council last night.

The area proposed for rezoning from “Z2 Sub-Urban” to “Z3 General Urban District” is about 17 acres generally located in the area of 19th Southwest between South Harding and Augusta Drive that would include a 53-unit, three-story living facility that compliments the improvements made to the golf club property.

The city received a petition of 40% of the surrounding property owners within 200 feet of the area, meaning the council had to approve all three readings of the rezoning by a super majority vote of at least 5-1. It did receive a 5-1 vote at the council’s May 20th meeting with Councilman Tim Latham voting no, but last night’s vote was 4-2.

Will Symonds changed his vote between the two meetings, agreeing with some of the residents’ concerns about what might happen if the zone changes but the project does not happen.  “My worry is that if you something were to go wrong, and this goes to Zone 3 and then you offload this property, now it has a ton of uses, and I don’t know if I could look any of them in the eye and say ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t do my due diligence and I didn’t ask the developers to do what I felt was necessary’. So I’m having trouble continuing to support it as it currently sits.”

Symonds says he supports the project, but his vote weighed on the ramifications of changing the zoning of the property.  “I think that you guys, the development team, has shown a track record here that you come in, you do what you say you’re going to do. In the eight-ish years that I’ve been up here, we’ve seen some projects come in and they are well intentioned, the people have a good track record, and then something goes wrong, and that’s the piece that I’m hung up on right now.”

Several councilmen expressed that they wished the zoning could remain the same but that a conditional use permit could be approved for the project.