Flay Avenue residents don’t want business in the backyard

BY JACKIE BUSSJAEGER INTERIM CITIZEN EDITOR

HUGO — A business zone in downtown Hugo will stay a business zone … for now. But some residents of Flay Avenue are determined to convince the city to change their neighborhood, which includes several young families, to residential-only.

Only 60 percent of the property owners in the Flay Avenue neighborhood signed their name to a petition to rezone their neighborhood to exclude commercial businesses—not enough to convince the City Council just yet.

Right now, the area of Flay Avenue north of Subway and 147th Street N. is zoned Future Central Business (FCB) as part of the city’s downtown development plan. Parcels in this type of district are essentially set aside in the hope a business will apply to develop them — all it takes is a request to the City Council to get the individual property rezoned for commercial use. Single-family homes are also permitted within this type of zone, which is likely to blame for some of the confusion.

But Flay Avenue residents aren’t excited to see this kind of growth when it pushes into their homes.

When Shane and Alex Rooney moved into the community in the last year, they thought their neighborhood was residential, and weren’t expecting a bank branch to move in next door. Their property is close to the entrance to the Premier Bank, which was constructed in the neighborhood in summer 2022. Shane expressed the personal concern for his family’s safety from having a well-visited business nearby, located on a dead-end road in a secluded neighborhood.

“I don’t want a Wendy’s next to my house,” Shane said. “I just bought my house a year ago. It’s not a business area. We do not want this to be business. The bank going in was a hard hit for us. How many people are going to be driving down this road as my kids are on their bikes? I wouldn’t have moved out there if I would have known that. It’s a family neighborhood.”

Alex added that some neighbors who didn’t sign the petition were apathetic rather than unsupportive— they didn’t seem to believe that more businesses would be likely to come along anytime soon, and therefore didn’t see the need to request rezoning.

“They don’t see the point,” she said. “We don’t even have a sidewalk on our street. The more traffic you add to that street, the more dangerous it is for our kids.”

Members of the City Council were more than happy to give the residents more time to collect signatures before making a decision. City staff will send a letter to the neighborhood households, stating that the petition was received and rezoning to residential may be considered in the future if all the property owners sign the petition.

The matter is now in the hands of Flay Avenue residents, who can bring it back for council consideration if and when they are able to collect more signatures.