A Macomb zoning primer

You can't escape the zoning battles in Macomb, and that's true even if you don't practice real estate for a living.

Up until a few years ago, you could take any house in Macomb and rent it out to up to four unrelated college students. Didn't matter what the zoning was -- single-family, multi-family, whatever -- you could pretty much do whatever you wanted with your house, and there was little the city could do about it. (Loud underage parties at 2 a.m. were an exception, at least if such a house sat across the street from sleep-respecting locals.)

Then a few years ago (around 2002, I think), everything changed. A group called Project HANDS (Homeowners and Neighborhood Development Strategies) lobbied Macomb's city council to come up with new rules regarding how many college kids you could pack into a rental house.

The new zoning categories set the following standards:

R1 (single-family): No more than two unrelated tenants, no matter how many bedrooms the house may have.

R2 (single-family): Same as R1.

R3 (multi-family): Possibly up to six unrelated tenants, but only if the building's configured as some sort of duplex and has two kitchens.

R4 (multi-family): Up to six unrelated tenants, depending on the number of bedrooms. (Think of your typical college party house.)

Note: The City of Macomb considers "related" students to be students who are married, siblings, or first cousins. Second cousins or relations that stretch beyond that aren't allowed.

When this zoning change took effect, there were some R1 and R2 houses that were "grandfathered in" and allowed to continue being rented out to four college students. But these properties have to continue to be used as rentals in an ongoing fashion in order to retain their grandfathered-in status. If they go at least 12 months without doing so, they lose their grandfathered-in status forever and can't get it back. (I compare this to the extinction of the dinosaurs; grandfathered-in properties aren't being created, but they can be destroyed.)

How does the new zoning classification system work?

Let's say you have a four-bedroom house in the northwest quadrant of town, right across the street from Western Illinois University. The house is zoned single-family; it wasn't grandfathered in. How many college students can live there?

Only two, if they're unrelated.

There are exceptions, but they're rare. You might have two brothers who want to live together, and then they'd be allowed to have an unrelated friend as a third tenant. Or you could have a family of triplets who want to live together, and they'd be allowed to have an unrelated friend as a fourth tenant. But only in such exceptions could you hope to fill out and actually use all four bedrooms of a single-family house. That means most single-family houses (which constitute the majority of housing in Macomb) are off-limits to what college students want to do with them. This can be good or bad, depending on whether you're (1) a college student looking for a place to live or (2) a local who doesn't want college students trashing up the neighborhood.

As a result, anything with R3 or R4 zoning has had a premium placed on it. And there aren't many R3 or R4 properties in Macomb, as you can see on the city's zoning map:

http://www.cityofmacomb.com/pdf/zoning_A.pdf

(The file's pretty big, so give it a few seconds to load after you click the link.)

What's especially noteworthy are the colors in the northwest quadrant, near WIU. The dark brown color signifies R4 properties. A good percentage of this is land owned by the university and used for residence halls, but there are some privately owned R4 lots off to the south and east, such as a solid stretch along West Murray and West Pierce.

And then there's the island -- a pinkish R2 zone that encompasses mostly Chandler Boulevard, Orchard Street, and Stadium Drive. It's all zoned single-family. And it's completely surrounded by R4 properties.

If there are zoning battles in Macomb, that island's on the front lines.