The proposed zoning changes come in response to a Charlotte training school operator’s bid to buy the old Charles B. Aycock Elementary School building on Ridge Avenue.

Council meets at 7 p.m. at 314 S. Main St.

Planning staff drafted, and the Planning Board last month voted to recommend, two new definitions for the city’s zoning ordinance: boarding school and dormitory.

Taking language from a proposed countywide ordinance, a boarding school is defined as a public or private school “which provides lodging or dwelling for students or faculty on the same property.”

Under the proposed ordinance, a dormitory would be a building where a group of people not of the same family live together in a room or series of rooms.

The Kannapolis ordinance would allow facilities falling under those definitions in only three of the city’s zoning districts: highway commercial, general commercial and central business.

But the proposed ordinance would allow those uses in all residential and commercial districts as a conditional use, so planners think the city will likely see a conflict when considering the broader zoning document.

City leaders could opt to keep their restrictions, but the purpose of the proposed countywide ordinance is to standardize zoning and development rules across jurisdictional lines.

A moratorium on some group facilities throughout the city, imposed to give council time to consider restrictions, ends July 1.

The moratorium and the proposed restrictions came after Isaac Murray, CEO of Murray Adolescent Training and Treatment Academy of Charlotte, bid $1.5 million for the Aycock Elementary building.

Kannapolis City Schools accepted the bid, but Murray withdrew from the deal because he was unable to get financing.

But the mere thought of Murray’s plan to house, treat and educate 55 troubled youths there worried neighbors and spurred city government to action.

The Aycock Elementary building is still for sale, and the school system recently began soliciting sealed bids to both buy and demolish the building. The U.S. Postal Service has expressed interest in locating the Kannapolis office there.

In other business, council will:

• Conduct a public hearing and consider an application by Bill Watts to rezone two parcels of land on Mooresville Road between Franklin and Cypress avenues from neighborhood commercial to conditional-use highway commercial. Watts wants to relocate and expand his NASCAR collectibles wholesale business.

The rezoning would allow Watts several other uses for the property, including retail, office and service-related businesses, including a pharmacy, a photocopy shop and a hair salon.

• Conduct a public hearing to close an unnamed and unused street off Hopedale Street.
• Consider an ordinance to demolish a dilapidated house at 1016 Indiana St.