Contract Zoning: A Flexible Technique for Protecting Maine Municipalities

Since the constitutionality of comprehensive zoning plans was upheld by the 1926 United States Supreme Court decision in Euclid v. Ambler Realty, municipal zoning has become an acceptable, indeed a necessary, fact of life. Maine, as well as most states, has enacted zoning enabling legislation pursuant to which many Maine municipalities have adopted zoning ordinances. The standard zoning approach which has evolved since Euclid has been based largely on the concept of uniform gridiron districts which conform to a legislatively preconceived comprehensive plan intended to assist municipalities in maintaining an orderly growth. These comprehensive plans, however, frequently have become a planning burden because they discourage land uses which were not anticipated either at the time the original plans were written or when the plans were updated. As a result, the traditional zoning approach is often incapable of meeting the demands of a growing society with its rapid technological, environmental, and cultural changes. Contract zoning, properly utilized as a complementary planning mechanism, can enable a municipality to adapt quickly and effectively to such unanticipated demands. This comment considers the use of contract zoning as a supplementary zoning technique which municipalities could employ to alleviate some of the problems created by the inflexibility of traditional planning and zoning. The primary advantage of contract zoning is its availability to a municipality for the regulation of an unanticipated development proposal and the accompanying land use problems, a situation traditional zoning is unable to accommodate satisfactorily.