County approves Quincy zoning

Urban growth area expansion fills need

QUINCY — The City of Quincy received approval Dec. 1 from Grant County commissioners to amend their comprehensive plan and expand an urban growth area to the east of town.

Quincy City Administrator Tim Snead said the majority of the 2,500 acres approved was zoned for industrial purposes, with the remainder approved for residential.

"With all of the developments that we've got going on, the industrial acreage in the port was about 180 acres," Snead said.

There were 20 acres left in residential development for the city's urban growth boundary, originally approved in 1996 for the next 20 years.

"So we were in dire need of expanding our urban growth," he added.

For the city to provide services, Snead said, development must be located within an urban growth area.

The majority of the new industrial property is located to the east of Quincy and follows the railroad, Snead said. An urban growth expansion was also approved for Entezar, which proposed a conceptual development before the Quincy City Council earlier this year. The expansion is located south of town, Snead added.

The Quincy city council hopes to adopt the comprehensive plan Dec. 19, Snead said.

"Basically, we've got to update our comp plan because it's 10 years old, and the law requires that," he said.

The changes put the city in compliance with updated laws, expand the urban growth area and updates development regulations.

With businesses like software company Intuit and others eyeing the Quincy area, Snead said it's a joint effort between the city and the county to amend the city's comprehensive plan, a possibility which only arises once a year.

"We thought it would be in our best interest to have the available land if a company's looking, because they won't look if you can't provide the services," he said.

"Quincy has shown a great need for residential, as well as some other commercial support space that's necessary," Grant County Commissioner Leroy Allison said. "Quincy is one of those communities surrounded on all sides by agriculture. Some of it isn't the best agriculture, but it's agriculture."

The county commissioners did not approve several small parcels of land that were removed from the comprehensive plan, he noted.

The original urban growth area was very constrained, especially in the wake of interest from large corporations and supporting population, Allison noted.

"When Microsoft and Yahoo! and a few others get interested, plus the expansion of Columbia Colstor, we recognize there's a need, and this proposal evidently will meet that need," he said.