By Melissa St. Aude | Casa Grande Dispatch
Casa Grande Planning and Zoning Commission members on Thursday OK’d a set of bakery- related zoning text amendments, with some changes to the staff’s proposal.
Commission members removed reference to where manufactured goods could be distributed.
“If we don’t care where they distribute to, maybe we ought not define where they distribute to,” commission member Brett Benedict said.
The code change would allow California-based commercial baker Food For Life to move forward with its proposal to convert a 75,000-square-foot building into a food processing plant. In 2012, the company purchased the blue-striped building at the intersection of the Gila Bend Highway and Thornton Road and submitted preliminary plans to the city to subdivide and expand the facility into a 150,000-square- foot bakery.
However, the building is in an industrial 1 zone and without the zoning text amendment, a bakery would not be permitted there.
The changes to the code are designed to define the difference between a commercial baker which manufactures goods for distribution and a small retail shop where food is prepared and sold.
Under the current code, retail bakeries smaller than 3,500 square feet are allowed in some business zones. Bakeries larger than 3,500 square feet are only allowed in industrial 2 zones, but large commercial bakers are not specifically mentioned in the code.
Other food processing plants are allowed in both industrial 1 and 2 zones.
The proposed changes to the code allow commercial bakers in either industrial 1 or 2 zones and set them apart from retail bakeries.
