Many city residents will never need to know what constitutes a Pilot Residential District. The type of infill housing development a Pilot Residential District would allow isn’t going to be found in most neighborhoods.

That’s one reason why there wasn’t much controversy over the City Council’s approval of the districts. In our view the lack of controversy is a positive, because Pilot Residential Districts, used correctly, could solve two pressing problems in the city – affordable housing and what to do with lots in the city that used to contain houses that are empty after the home on the lot was demolished.

The creation of Pilot Residential Districts allows for flexible zoning standards for infill housing development on eligible publicly owned parcels, while still requiring site plan review and ensuring compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods. During a recent meeting of the city’s Planning Commission, Crystal Surdyk, city development director, showed the commission a map of the districts where infill housing projects are planned to take place for the pilot project, saying the districts specifically have been picked as they are the ones known to be in need of help.

“These have all been identified through the process of being identified as neighborhoods that need some strategic intervention,” Surdyk said. “That might be by virtue of demolition; that may be some rehabilitation projects with housing; we may have some 19A properties in those neighborhoods, and I know that we do in some of these.”

It’s somewhat ironic that we cautioned against the granting of too many zoning variances for short-term rentals in Lakewood earlier this week because creators of the recently approved short-term rental regulations in the village obviously intended to keep short-term rentals from overrunning the village’s R-1 residential district. This is a different animal than the Lakewood situation. In Jamestown, zoning laws have made it difficult to get projects that could be a real help to struggling neighborhoods off the ground. And Jamestown is still struggling to create enough affordable housing – something the Pilot Residential Districts could help by making it easier to build new types of housing in neighborhoods in need of investment and intervention.

Just as important is the fact that city officials saw an issue and came up with a way to solve the issue. Too often in the past the city has relied on the way things have always been done, which in this case would have meant waiting for a new zoning code to be written. But time is of the essence given the homelessness issues the city is facing and lack of investment in some neighborhoods. We don’t think intervention in the Pilot Residential District neighborhoods could wait for a full zoning code rewrite, and the old zoning code would not have allowed for this type of intervention.

The Development Department and City Council have set the stage for neighborhood revitalization projects. Now it’s time for the city and housing developers to do the rest.