Conneaut pursuing comprehensive zoning reform
CONNEAUT — The city is looking to conduct a comprehensive zoning reform this year, City Manager Nick Sanford said.
He said the city identified the need for zoning reform in an update to its comprehensive plan in 2018.
'Our zoning text by and large dates back in 1982,' Sanford said.
The city needs to update its zoning codes to reflect the fact it is not 1982 anymore, he said.
'Our zoning code's just old, frankly,' he said.
City leadership is interested in reforms that work out for both residents and developers, Sanford said.
Sanford is interested in having the zoning districts have more flexibility for development and applications for development, while working to preserve historic buildings in the city, he said.
Sanford said the update has to focus on the fact Conneaut is geographically diverse, with a coastline and rural and urban areas.
'It's imperative that we are mindful of that,' he said.
Sanford was thankful for the work of previous city administrations and councils for what they could do to pursue the issue, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Sanford is interested in having the zoning reforms done by the end of the year, he said.
'I think it's an achievable goal,' he said.
The city is still in the early stages of the project, Sanford said.
'We're essentially testing waters to get started in this,' he said.
Sanford said he wants to have community workshops to hear from residents.
None are planned yet, he said.
The city was interested in getting a grant from the Ohio Department of Development to fund the project.
Council passed a resolution approving the grant application at an April 28 meeting.
Sanford said ODD received around $2 million in requests, and had to close the window for funding applications early.
'This is something we're still going to pursue without funding,' he said.
Sanford said MS Consultants, an engineering firm the city uses, has several employees versed in the nuances of zoning reform and law, who can help the city.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Illinois rental assistance program sees funding cut for 2026 budget in another blow to state, city housing programs
William Dalton had never faced eviction until a series of bad events struck last year: His mom died, his relationship with the mother of his now 5-year-old daughter ended and his car was totaled. He fell behind on the rent for his two-bedroom apartment in the New City neighborhood. It caused him 'anxiety every day,' he said, after receiving the eviction notice a couple of months later. He didn't know where he would go if he lost his apartment, the home where his daughter was born. 'It was a lot on me,' Dalton said, who works in education. 'It is very hard to concentrate on things you need to get done, especially when you have a little one depending on you.' In a move that has brought him 'great relief,' Dalton was able to keep the roof over his head, where he has lived for five years, thanks to $10,000 from Illinois' rental assistance program. 'Once everything was settled, it was like I could actually start living life again,' he said. 'And it is very important for my daughter to see. I tried my best to mask it, but I'm pretty sure she picked up on it.' After its inaugural year as a state-funded effort, Illinois' court-based rental assistance program for tenants like Dalton struggling to pay rent and their landlords will stop accepting applications Friday and will see a third of its funds wiped away in the 2026 fiscal year that begins July 1. The reduction comes after the state grappled with serious fiscal challenges when balancing its budget this year, issues exacerbated by a federal government focused on axing spending. State lawmakers cut spending in various areas beyond housing as well. Dalton is one of 7,129 renters who has received assistance this fiscal year from the state program. The state housing authority's goal was to assist 8,900 households through the new program but will likely see closer to 8,000 households supported, said Illinois Housing Development Authority Executive Director Kristin Faust in an interview with the Tribune. The state agency administers the rental assistance program. Faust said the 8,900 number was based on an authority projection. 'We had hoped it would take us to the very end of the fiscal year because we always want to be able to meet all the need,' Faust said. 'The need was even greater than we expected.' So far, Faust said about $58 million in aid has been distributed to tenants and landlords, with thousands more applications yet to be processed and a small portion of the funds kept for administrative fees. The state program was previously funded by federal aid distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic and focused on helping tenants experiencing COVID-19-related hardships and at risk of eviction. At its height, the program provided up to $25,000 in rental assistance to cover up to 15 months of past-due rent and up to three months of future rent. Rental assistance programs became widespread during the pandemic to aid the millions of renters who were struggling to pay their rent on time across the country after many lost their jobs and got sick. Illinois allocated $75 million in state funding to continue to provide rental assistance to tenants and their landlords for fiscal year 2025. Unlike many other states and municipalities, Illinois made a significant allocation of dollars to continue the program. For fiscal year 2026, the state has appropriated $50 million. The next iteration of the program is expected to begin accepting applications in August, Faust said. 'We think it is overall a positive sign that the state in a difficult budget climate is continuing to invest in the program,' said Bob Glaves, executive director of the Chicago Bar Foundation, which manages the state eviction diversion program. Faust agreed, calling the program 'a very positive lesson learned out of COVID.' The court-based rental assistance program is just one aspect of the state's eviction diversion program, known formally as the Early Resolution Program. Tenants and small landlords can also receive legal aid to help settle eviction cases before they go to trial. Under the state-funded rental assistance program for the 2025 fiscal year, households facing eviction can receive up to $15,000 in rental assistance, which can pay past-due rent, up to $500 in court costs and up to two months of future rent, according to the state housing authority. Next fiscal year's program will see the maximum amount of aid reduced to $10,000, with a raise to $700 for eligible court costs coverage. Faust said this decision was made based on data from this year's program and conversations with legal aid, tenants and landlords. The authority estimates about 6,500 households will be able to receive assistance. 'We are feeling that we will be able to meet the majority of needs with this new dollar amount,' Faust said, 'and then also try to keep the program going for as long as possible for the next fiscal year.' Some of the data considered was the average amount of assistance doled out so far this fiscal year, which has been around $8,260, or eight months of rent. And 39% of aided households are extremely low income, earning less than $36,000 a year for a household of four, the state said. Eligible tenants have to make 80% or less of the area median income and do not have to be facing a COVID-19-related hardship. For a household of four, the area median income for much of the last fiscal year in Chicago was $89,700, according to the Chicago Department of Housing. For the next round of assistance, the state said tenants will be ineligible if they have received aid in the last 18 months. Renters do not have to prove their citizenship status and must have an active eviction case due to nonpayment of rent to qualify. Housing providers are not allowed to evict tenants during the grant's coverage period for nonpayment of rent. And for tenants whose landlords are unwilling to participate in the program, the state offers up to two months of future rent payments to help them find a new place to live. Renters in Chicago and Cook County maintain the right to stay in their homes if they pay their debts in full to their landlord at any time before an official eviction order is filed. Illinois lawmakers pass budget with tax hikes on tobacco, gambling — but adjourn without transit, Bears stadium Cook County housing authority facing potential multimillion-dollar budget shortfall as agencies brace for funding cuts Chicago housing nonprofit providing rental subsidies for very low-income renters facing a $10M budget shortfall After lawmakers pass budget with cuts and tax hikes, Gov. JB Pritzker blames state's fiscal challenges on Trump Lawmakers send flurry of bills to governor's desk in final days of spring session As Johnson administration touts 'Cut the Tape,' affordable housing developers want faster progress While Gov. JB Pritzker scored wins during legislative session, cellphone ban, other initiatives fell short There will be less money available for those in need of rental assistance, but Chicago's rent prices are showing no signs of easing. In May, rents in Chicago increased 2% compared to .4% nationally, which was the second fastest month-over-month rent growth of the nation's largest 100 cities, according to Apartment List. The city's year-over-year rent growth stands at 5%, landing it in fourth place for fastest growth among the nation's largest 100 cities. The rental assistance program dollars are a piece of the state's roughly $263.7 million Home Illinois budget — an initiative aimed at preventing and ending homelessness — for the coming fiscal year. The Home Illinois budget saw an overall decrease in its pot of funds of approximately $26.6 million, according to state budget documents. The same documents show that the Home Illinois funds were significantly underused in the 2024 fiscal year, but the Illinois Department of Human Services said this is because it was a 'start-up' year for multiple programs. There are also separate rental assistance dollars allocated to other state programs, the state said, with $89.5 million total (including the $50 million court-based program) earmarked to support those efforts this coming fiscal year. For the 2025 fiscal year, the number spent is estimated at $130 million. The reduction in funds this coming fiscal year hit as area housing groups who rely on city, state and federal dollars are already struggling to provide subsidized housing to some of the lowest income residents in the state as they are facing multimillion dollar budget shortfalls. Gov. JB Pritzker highlighted housing affordability as a key issue in his State of the State speech in February. Still, some of the most ambitious proposals that legislators introduced on the topic didn't pass out of the General Assembly. Bob Palmer, policy director for Housing Action Illinois, a group advocating for an increase in affordable housing in the state, said that while he is thankful to see the state committing serious dollars to Home Illinois even in challenging budget times, the government has to find a way to increase funding for the initiative every year if it wants to accomplish the initiative's goal. 'Ending homelessness and making sure everyone has a safe and decent place to live should be one of the highest priorities, and the budget that passed doesn't reflect that,' Palmer said. Through April of this year, about 8,280 residential evictions were filed, according to the most recently available data from the Circuit Court of Cook County. Eviction filings in Cook County have been at pre-pandemic levels since 2022. Enforced evictions — those carried out by the sheriff's office under a court order — at residential rental properties caught up to 2019 levels for the first year in 2023. Most evictions in the city typically take place on the South and West sides in majority Black and Latino communities, trends that line up with national data showing racial minorities are more likely to face eviction. The pandemic disproportionately affected racial minorities, who were more likely to experience hardships such as job loss and illness. Landlords and their attorneys have said that sometimes rental assistance ends up being a Band-Aid fix, with housing providers having to evict their residents even after they have received aid. As an owner of five buildings with a total of 17 apartments, primarily in Washington Park, Gene Lee has received rental assistance for two tenants when the program was federally funded. In those cases, Lee said the renters had worked for Chicago Public Schools and their work hours were cut during the pandemic. For tenants who are communicative and experiencing short-term financial hardships such as those two CPS workers, the rental assistance program is effective, Lee said. Now, as the program faces a funding cut and rising rent costs are eating into households' budgets, Lee said housing providers like himself will be put in a tough position if there is not enough assistance available for some tenants in need. 'If those (rental assistance) resources become a little bit limited, it puts pressure on us,' said Lee, who runs TLG Development and works at LinkedIn. 'Do we make an economic decision to try to evict this tenant and find someone else, or do you try to have a heart for someone who just needs a place and falls on hard times?' To apply for the Illinois Court-Based Rental Assistance Program, go to Tribune reporter Olivia Olander contributed. ekane@
New York Post
13 minutes ago
- New York Post
Office space is now being razed or converted faster than it's being built — for the first time in 25 years
While return-to-office mandates may be the talk of the town, office conversions and demolitions reign supreme. More office space is being demolished or converted than is being built through new construction this year. That's according to CBRE Group data reported by CNBC. This marks the first time the scales have shifted in at least 25 years, according to the commercial real estate services firm, demonstrating the lasting and seismic impact of remote work culture in the wake of COVID-19. The inflection point is clear — 23.3 million square feet of office space across the largest 58 US markets will be demolished or converted by the end of 2025, CNBC reported. Just 12.7 million square feet of new office construction will be completed. 5 5 Times Square was left nearly vacant by its former tenant, the auditing firm Ernst & Young. Now it's destined for a residential makeover. Bloomberg via Getty Images 5 The former facade of the since-converted 25 Water St. The office building slowly emptied as JPMorgan Chase, the National Enquirer and the New York Daily News departed. Stefano Giovannini 'We have more office space than we need, and most of the office space that's being demolished is functionally obsolete,' Barry DiRaimondo, CEO of the West Coast-based commercial real estate developer SteelWave, told The Post. 'So I think it's probably good all the way around.' Widespread pressure by major companies to get employees back in their cubicles, especially in New York City, gave a recent boost to office-leasing activity. More office space is now being occupied than vacated, CNBC reported, but office vacancies continue to hover around record highs at 19%. There are significant silver linings to the decline of office construction. Steven Shoumer, a partner at Blank Rome and co-chair of the firm's real estate group, told The Post in an email that shrinking supplies of new offices will help to stabilize rents as return-to-office demands grow. 'However, it will be interesting to see if office space availability gets tighter with vacancy rates lowering in the coming years, and consequently causes office rents to rise (which would also be good for building owners),' Shoumer wrote. Luxury, 'Class A' office owners and investors will particularly benefit from a thinned-out field of competitors, while well-positioned developers can be the star of the show with office-to-residential conversions. 5 Plans are being cooked up for the conversion of a near-empty office building along Flatbush Avenue to turn into Brooklyn's second-tallest residential tower. Binyan Studio and TenBerke Architects 5 One Wall Street, once the largest city's office-to-condo conversion, has since gained several converted FiDi neighbors. Evan Joseph Photography 5 A rendering of the converted interiors of 25 Water St. Streetsense Developers have primed 85 million square feet of former office space for conversions over the next few years, CNBC added. New York City is leading the pack in office-to-apartment conversions, according to RentCafe, with more than 8,000 new apartments expected from repurposed office buildings projected as of February. That number is only increasing with new conversion plans popping up at neglected addresses every few weeks, from Downtown Brooklyn's 395 Flatbush Ave. to 5 Times Square. Successful conversions across the city are racking up. FiDi's 25 Water St. — the former home of JPMorgan Chase, the National Enquirer and the New York Daily News — set a record this year as the largest office-to-resi conversion in the country. There's also Pearl House in the Seaport District, the massive former-bank One Wall Street and ex-Goldman Sachs HQ 55 Broad. Less office construction can also be a boon to the average Joe, too. Although shrinking office footprints might not get folks out of their morning commute into Midtown, the conversion of other, obsolete offices will offer a boost to housing supplies and cheaper rents.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Is It Time to Buy Peloton Stock? Here's the Good News and the Bad News.
Peloton Interactive's stock price has plunged by 95% from its 2021 high. The company continues to grapple with shrinking sales, but it's making progress at the bottom line. A beaten-down stock doesn't always equal a cheap stock, and that might be the case here. 10 stocks we like better than Peloton Interactive › Peloton Interactive (NASDAQ: PTON) stock peaked at $163 in 2021, which represented an eye-popping return of 460% for investors who bought it at the time of its initial public offering (IPO) the year before. But the stock has since lost 95% of its peak value, and a recovery appears uncertain. Consumers were buying at-home exercise equipment hand over fist at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so they could stay fit during the lockdowns and social restrictions. But Peloton failed to evolve once that demand cooled off, which sent its revenue plunging and its losses soaring. There was even a period of time when Peloton's survival was in question, before management made a series of changes. The company's future is still uncertain, but there is now some good news to go along with its ongoing struggles. Here's what investors need to know before deciding whether to buy the stock. Peloton generates revenue in two ways. First, it sells exercise equipment like its stationary bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines. Second, it offers a subscription product for customers who want to access exclusive classes to get the most out of their Peloton equipment, and also a separate subscription product for non-equipment owners who want to track their fitness journeys. Peloton's annual revenue peaked at $4 billion during its fiscal year 2021 (ended June 30, 2021), and it has declined every year since. It fell to $3.5 billion in fiscal 2022, then $2.8 billion in fiscal 2023, and $2.7 billion in fiscal 2024. Management's fiscal 2025 forecast suggests it will decline even further in the current year, to just under $2.5 billion. The composition of Peloton's revenue has changed dramatically over the last few years. In fiscal 2021, equipment sales represented 78% of the company's total revenue, with subscriptions accounting for the other 22%. But equipment sales now make up just 33% of total revenue, with subscriptions representing the majority. Demand has declined dramatically for Peloton's flagship exercise machines since the height of the pandemic. The company has pulled several different levers to resurrect it, but they don't appear to be working. It closed many of its stores and shifted sales to third-party retailers like Amazon and Dick's Sporting Goods to reach more customers, and it even launched financing and rental options to reduce the entry cost for lower-income consumers. Connected fitness subscriptions are directly tied to equipment sales, so if Peloton sells fewer bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines, it also becomes harder to grow its subscriber base. In fact, it shrank by 6% over the past year, to 2.88 million members. Shrinking businesses can destroy shareholder value over time, so investors typically avoid buying into them (hence the 95% drop in Peloton's share price over the last few years). In fiscal 2022 -- the first year Peloton's revenue declined -- management still had its cost structure geared toward growth. In other words, it was spending more money with less money coming in. As a result, the company wound up generating a staggering generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net loss of $2.8 billion that year. That was completely unsustainable, and Peloton faced the possibility of bankruptcy if it couldn't reduce its losses because its cash balance was quickly evaporating. Since then, management has slashed costs and secured financing to protect Peloton's future. In fiscal 2024, the company's operating expenses were down by almost half compared to their fiscal 2022 level, led by cuts to sales and marketing. The downtrend continued in the first three quarters of fiscal 2025, with operating expenses cut by a further 26% year over year. Peloton is still in the red on a GAAP basis, generating a net loss of $140 million in fiscal 2025 to date. However, after stripping out one-off and non-cash expenses like stock-based compensation, the company has actually generated positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $70.3 million during the period. This is management's preferred measure of profitability, because it's a better indicator of how much real money the business is generating. This is good news in the sense that Peloton is no longer at risk of going out of business in the near future. But there is no telling where the bottom is in terms of the company's shrinking revenue. Management will eventually run out of costs to cut, which could put the business in a precarious position yet again at some point. Peloton has $914 million in cash on its balance sheet, and now that it's profitable (on a non-GAAP EBITDA basis), it has an opportunity to start investing in growth again. However, it also has $947 million in long-term debt, so it can't get too adventurous and start burning cash at the bottom line. Earlier, I said investors typically avoid buying into shrinking businesses. If Peloton can't find a way to reignite its sales growth in a sustainable way, then it's probably going to face mounting losses again in the future. That creates a significant risk for investors who buy the stock today, even though it's already down by 95% from its record high. This is one of those situations where a beaten-down stock doesn't necessarily equal a cheap stock, so investors might want to stay away until Peloton proves it can sustainably grow its sales. Before you buy stock in Peloton Interactive, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Peloton Interactive wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $657,385!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $842,015!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 987% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Peloton Interactive. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is It Time to Buy Peloton Stock? Here's the Good News and the Bad News. was originally published by The Motley Fool
