The city of Whitefish proposes to add another layer of planning oversight for some businesses in the secondary business district along the U.S. 93 South corridor by changing them from permitted to conditional uses.

The Whitefish Planning Board on Thursday will consider the zoning text amendment during a public hearing at a meeting that begins at 6 p.m. at Whitefish City Hall. The proposal tweaks a number of uses in the highway corridor.

The Whitefish City Council directed staff to amend the zoning code from permitted to conditional uses for automobile, boat and RV sales, rentals, repair and service, as well as machinery and equipment sales and rentals and repair, crematories and formula restaurants. The change would allow the city to review these uses for character and aesthetic impacts as well as impacts to available municipal services and traffic, according to the planning staff report.

“Automobile, boat, RV and machinery and equipment sales, rentals and repair are uses that typically have large parking and display areas to show merchandise or store vehicles and thus have a greater potential for aesthetic impacts,” the staff report stated. “They also typically have less vehicle traffic compared to other uses such as grocery stores or gas stations.

Auto, boat and RV parts sales would remain a permitted use.

Formula, or chain restaurants, are prohibited in the downtown area and require a conditional use in the WB-1 zone. For the WB-2 zone, formula restaurants — but not “regular” restaurants — will require a conditional-use permit if the text amendment is adopted.

The proposed changes further would switch light assembly and light manufacturing businesses from conditional uses in the highway corridor to an administrative conditional-use permit “to help fast-track the approval process for those uses.”

Research laboratories and institutions would be added to the conditional uses in the WB-2 zone.

The city planning staff recommends moving personal services businesses to permitted uses in the WB-2 zone to provide more flexibility to uses that are more suited for the highway district than the downtown retail core, the staff report notes. Personal services businesses don’t involve retail sales except for items such as hair products at a salon.

The city also proposes a zoning text amendment for minor housekeeping updates to multi-family development, mixed-use and non-residential development standards and will hold a public hearing on the proposal. In general, the proposed changes clarify the intent of regulations such as required open space, or they provide greater flexibility such as additional exceptions for things such as landscaping, tree retention and public plazas for required maximum setbacks, the staff report said.

In particular, setbacks for commercial or mixed-use buildings along streets can increase their required maximum setback if they are saving trees or putting in landscaping or outdoor public pedestrian amenities, the report stated. The proposal also provides incentives for smaller building mass.

In other business, the board will hold public hearings on two requests for permits to construct accessory apartments, one at 35 Columbia Ave. and the other at 25 Oregon Ave.

News editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.