The GlaxoSmithKline facility near Highway 41 and Elm Avenue is seen in this Google Street View image.

The Fresno City Council on Thursday voted to thread the needle on a consequential Southwest Fresno rezone application.

The industrial property in question includes 92 acres of land at Highway 41 and Elm Avenue. The applicant seeks to revert the zoning back to industrial from mixed-use — a designation resulting from the 2017 Southwest Fresno Specific Plan.

The rezone is opposed by Southwest Fresno community groups, environmental justice advocates and others who say that part of town should no longer bear the brunt of industry’s environmental impacts.

At the end of hours of debate Thursday, a proposal from Fresno City Council member Miguel Arias first reported by The Business Journal Wednesday won out. The council voted unanimously for the rezone back to industrial to apply only to property occupied by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and the Mid Valley Disposal — what Arias deemed as essential businesses.

The last-minute amendment includes a dozen conditions including not being able to expand or intensify use, but it would free the property owners from the current zoning restrictions that make it nearly impossible to bring in new industrial tenants.

As part of Arias’s motion — which was unanimously approved by the council — the Fresno planning department will also within 90 days present a planning overlay that could prove to be solution for other industrial users.

It could impose additional standards and criteria that would allow uses running counter to the primary zoning. That would include an environmental review.

The trick in this situation, acknowledged the council and city planners, would be for commercial property owners and neighbors to agree on the compromise. The industrial applicants made it clear an overlay would put them at a disadvantage in attracting tenants — and it picks winners and losers.

Residents made clear that they want to see the original mixed-use zoning remain. Anything less would spell the end of protections from the Southwest Fresno Specific Plan, they said.