Business and Industrial districts and their regulations are established herein in order to achieve, among others, the following purposes:
(A) To provide in appropriate and convenient locations, zoning districts of sufficient size for the exchange of goods and services and other business and industrial activities.
(B) To provide a Neighborhood Business District (B-1) to serve the needs for convenience goods in proximity to the immediate neighborhood which do not attract large volumes of traffic. The character of these districts is intended to be compatible with that of surrounding residential neighborhoods. Buildings in these districts are typically smaller in scale than those found in the general business district.
(C) To provide a Downtown Business District (B-2) to:
(1) Reflect and reinforce the existing and desired pedestrian-scaled development pattern while accommodating the need for future growth;
(2) Preserve, maintain, enrich, and promote downtown Swanton as a core area for retail sales and mixed uses, which enhance the existing historic, compact pedestrian orientation of the downtown by permitting buildings to be close to the street and to one another.
(D) To provide a General Business District (B-3) to accommodate businesses that require large land areas and generate large volumes of traffic serving the needs for shopping, convenience goods and services of the entire community.
(E) To provide for a Light Industrial District (M-1) and associated regulations in order to achieve, among other things, the following:
(1) To provide in appropriate and convenient districts sufficient areas for carrying on research, providing commercial services, manufacturing and distributing goods to serve the community, to promote employment and to strengthen the economy of the community;
(2) To provide for business, contracting, storage, distribution and transportation services, and related types of minor production processes in appropriate and convenient areas;
(3) To provide for limited heaver industrial uses in appropriate locations for those products and processes that normally require a large amount of motor vehicle trucking for the transportation of the raw materials and finished products, but in which dust, smoke, fumes, glare, odors or other objectionable influences can be controlled;
(4) To improve the general environment by prohibiting dwellings, institutions and public facilities in industrial districts, and by so doing, make land more readily accessible for industry;
(5) To protect adjacent residential districts by restricting the types of manufacturing uses in the surrounding areas to only those not creating objectionable influences beyond industrial district boundaries and by separating and insulating them from the most intense manufacturing activities; and
(6) To protect manufacturing and related development against congestion and promote the appropriate regulation of the size of buildings in relation to the land and provide off-street parking and loading facilities.
(Ord. 2023-03, passed 2-27-2023)