JACKSON REZONES EAST MAIN

JACKSON, Mo. -- The Jackson Board of Alderman created a "consistent corridor" of zoning along East Main Street with the approval of an ordinance Monday night.

The ordinance rezones a portion of East Main Street from the existing R-3 zoning boundary, which is 400 feet east of Shawnee Boulevard, eastward to property owned by Jack V. Priest.

Priest, whose company repairs tractor-trailer refrigeration units, has stored several tractor trailers on his property that can be seen from the road. The city requested that Priest, who had sought to rezone part of the property for a commercial use, construct a fence to hide the trailers.

Priest, his relatives and lawyer attended Monday's meeting but did not address the council.

Priest and others who own 53.5 acres of land on East Main Street have been working for nearly four months with the Jackson Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Alderman to have the property zoned for commercial use.

But the city has refused requests to rezone it from single-family residential to general commercial use.

The 50 or so residents who live along that section of East Main Street have asked that the land not be rezoned for commercial use, said Steve Wilson, city administrator.

"There are a lot of properties on East Main that are multi-family and are zoned R-3. The board created a consistent corridor" of zoning with the ordinance, he said.

Priest has been running his business from the site for 29 years. City officials say he has never filed for a city merchant's license or special-use permit for the operation.

Since the refrigeration unit business was operating before the city annexed the land in the 1970s its use was grandfathered. But with the rezoning change, any business operating there would be doing so illegally, Wilson said.