URBANA – The city is proposing to rezone scores of properties in east Urbana to prevent owners from replacing older homes with small apartment buildings.

The Urbana Plan Commission will consider a wide-ranging proposal to downzone 154 properties at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the City Building, 400 S. Vine St.

A Champaign real estate professional, who with his family owns a house that would be rezoned, said he thinks the proposed downzonings will discourage investment in Urbana. But a leader of an organization in the neighborhood says most residents want the changes.

The eight blocks of properties to be rezoned are located between East Main Street and East Green Street on the north and south, and between South Grove Street on the west and South Glover Avenue on the east.

Several properties on the north side of East Main Street also would be downzoned to neighborhood business arterial or R-3, which allows single-family homes and duplexes.

The zoning changes were first suggested in the city's 2005 comprehensive plan update, according to Libby Tyler, Urbana's director of Community Development Services. A series of neighborhood meetings throughout the city, before adoption of the comprehensive plan, showed that residents in east Urbana were concerned about smaller apartment buildings, often unattractively placed and designed, replacing older homes.

Several such apartment buildings have been built in recent years.

Much of the neighborhood is currently zoned R-4, which allows both single family homes and smaller apartments, such as four and six-plexes. In the vast majority of cases, the city wants to change the zoning in the neighborhood to R-3 and just allow houses and duplexes.

Existing properties with apartments on them would not have their zoning changed, Tyler said.

The goal is to take a neighborhood that some real estate agents now consider an investment neighborhood and transform it into "more of a neighborhood to live in," Tyler said.

"This neighborhood has single-family uses, but multifamily zoning," she said.

But Alex Ruggieri, who owns a home at 210 S. Grove St., said he thinks the downzonings are "a taking" of property rights by the city.

"I've brought a lot of deals to Urbana," said Ruggieri, vice president of Ramshaw Real Estate in Champaign. "I'm always trying to promote Urbana. But this idea, the taking away of property rights to overtly force conditions on the market, almost always has a negative side effect."

Ruggieri said that when his family bought the home on South Grove Street, they thought they would pay down the mortgage for three to five years and then possibly "build something nice." But now, after he's made the investment, the city wants to limit what he can build, he said.

"The motivation is good," he said. "I understand it. But these kinds of mandates do have a side effect and sometimes a negative impact on investment in Urbana."

But city and neighborhood officials say the proposed downzonings appear to enjoy popular support.

A survey of neighborhood residents in east Urbana showed 74 percent support the proposed downzonings while 26 percent oppose them, according to Lisa Karcher, a city planner. She said 178 surveys were sent to property owners in the general neighborhood and that 62 percent responded.

The downzonings will help preserve the residential character of the neighborhood and encourage homeowners to reinvest in their homes, said Chris Stohr, chairman of the Historic East Urbana Neighborhood Association.

"We're trying to help maintain the owner-occupied houses that have been here and reduce the wear-down, tear-down, replace it with cheaply built apartments mentality," Stohr said. "The owner-occupied houses are something the people in the neighborhood want."

Stohr said the neighborhood association has been pushing for downzonings "for as long as we've been in existence, which is more than eight years."

City council approval will be required for the rezonings to take effect. The plan commission will make a nonbinding recommendation to the council.