Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-BZA-1979-03-05 i ii i� BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS CITY OF ITHACA, NEW YORK COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS I MARCH 5, 1979 I j, CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Let me call to order the March meeting of the Ithaca Board of Zoning Appeals . The Board operates under the pro- visions of the Ithaca City Charter and the Ithaca Zoning Ordinance . Present this evening are: Ms . Natalie DeCombray Mr. Morris Angell Mr . Joe Gainey Dr. Martin Greenberg Chairman Peter Martin Mr. Thomas Hoard, Zoning Officer $ Secy to the Board �f Mrs. Barbara Ruane, Recording Secy �jAbsent : Mr. William Wilcox ,The Board ' s proceedings are informal . We ask that those who present ievidence to the Board come to the front of the room and limit their (remarks to the issues that are in front of it . We have only one 1case this evening so we needn' t go into our procedure for dealing Ilwith multiple cases. After we hear the case we' ll go into executive i session to deliberate and then we will reconvene in public session i Ito announce the results . MR. GAINEY: Who dropped out? CHAIRMAN MARTIN: The second case - the Avramis case. Mr. Secretary ,our case is? SECRETARY HOARD: Appeal No . 1250 : Appeal of Frank Slattery for a use variance under Section 30. 25 , Column 2 (permitted uses) to permit �i rental of the upper unit of a two-fam- ily dwelling to four unrelated persons , itand an area variance under Section 30 . 25 i; Columns 12 , 13 and 14 (minimum require ii side yards and rear yard) to permit con- struction of an exterior stairway to serve as a second means of egress from the third floor . The property is lo- cated at 105 College Avenue , in an R-2 (residential) use district, in which no more than three unrelated persons may occupy a dwelling unit, and the i property is deficient in both side yards and rear yard. IMr. Slattery is here to present this case . Would you come up to Ijjthe podium? MR. SLATTERY: I am Frank Slattery, I reside at 960 E. State' Street, Ithaca, New York. The house I have at College AVenue is up a few f i 2 - doors from Mitchell and, as you saw on the map, it borders on a I, R- 3 and mine is on the line but it is classified as an R- 2b . The house next door to it, the house across the street from it, and the house behind it - are all R-3. It is in a college neighbor- hood and everyone who is in that neighborhood is a college student . The neighborhood is not going to be affected in any way by allowing me to begin the project that I 'd like to begin. There are two apartments in the house now - a three bedroom downstairs and a two bedroom up. There is a third floor that has two rooms that are, for all practical purposes, finished. Against my judgement and against my concerns , from time to time people have gone up there and have lived. There is - both rooms meet the city code as far as size and space and area but now it is not right - now it ' s not a safe place for people to be living , or to be occupying in any way. My concern is to bring the house up to code - all city codes - which it is right now, and to make the third floor a comfortable environment and for me to be able to rent that environment to i students. There is a strong possibility, if something happened there now, namely a fire, and if people were occupying it, which they do periodically people come up weekends and that kind of thing, or someone is there for a week or two at a time and they go up there and use that - either with a sleeping bag or a mattress and they use that as a residence for certain periods of time. I check it and when I see it I tell them to get out but it is diffi- cult for me to go there every day or even go there once a week to see that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. MR. ANGELL: Can' t you lock it? MR. SLATTERY: It is a - used for storage now and I ' d have to go u II through the get a rope or something to go up on the outside , I think. It ' s just a door - I don' t know if I could lock it correct- ly. There are times , maybe, when I 'd . . . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: The access to it is through the upper stairs? MR. SLATTERY: Through the second floor apartment . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: The second floor apartment, and that ' s the only access? I i' - 3 - MR. SLATTERY: That is the only access . I MR. GAINEY: How many rooms on the second floor? MR. SLATTERY: There are two bedrooms on the second floor. MR. GAINEY: That ' s all? MR. SLATTERY: That' s all . MR. GAINEY: No living room or anything is there? MR. SLATTERY: Oh, yes , there is a living room, a kitchen, a bath - it ' s equipped and it' s well furnished and right now it is all up t city code when it was checked in 1976 . MR. GAINEY: What ' s on the first floor? MR. SLATTERY: On the first floor is a three bedroom apartment. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: And those two apartments are of a size that you have no difficulty renting them within the R- 2 requirements? MR. SLATTERY: The two apartments as they are now? CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Yes . MR. SLATTERY. I can rent them that way. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Yes . MR. SLATTERY: I am concerned strongly with safety of the third floor. It is - from what I have read and seen some collegetown homes where students are living - it is a more comfortable environ- ment than a lot of them that they are getting rent for . The third floor as it exists right today. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: So you have a nice third floor and you find the 11 occupants of the second story apartment putting friends , etc . up there from time to time. . . . MR. SLATTERY: Yes, and people from the first floor are going up. . . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: And so what you want to do is make them all honest and put in a fire escape and get some rent . . . MR. SLATTERY: Yes , I want to heat it correctly, I want to wire i correctly and get some rent out of it , absolutely. MR. ANGELL: Are you putting a bath up there, also? MR. SLATTERY: No , I 'd just make that strictly two bedrooms up there. What I did is , I came down to Mr. Hoard' s office , I talked with Mr. Jones at length, explaining to him, he explained back t me _, which I didn' t quite understand, the technicalities so I asked 4 - for a - somebody from Mr. Hoard' s office to come up with me and to give me his impressions - if it is a viable thing for me to do and we went up there for forty-five minutes one afternoon and he took I measurements and size and said yes you are all - the rooms are sufficient - they are not up to code but the rooms are big enough to be up . . . MR. ANGELL: Then this becomes part of the second floor apartment? MR. SLATTERY: So this becomes part of the second floor . . . it ' s still two apartments but I 'd have a four bedroom that right now under the R- 2b it allows me to have three unrelated but not a fourth so I know if I made it a three that there would be a fourth person living there so I 'm asking in an honest way I come before you to ask you to make that exception. Parking, Mr. Hoard mentioned to me just now - there is ample parking for three cars. Now he mentioned to me just now that the cars can only have two cars in succession or two cars in a straight line. There are three cars i room for four cars but they would have to be parked one behind the other. As far as front yard and side yard, I 'm delinquent a I ifew feet in those areas but for all practicality I would say the house itself has a larger front yard than any house on College Avenue and it has a nice and as large a back yard as any house. If there were seven people living there, they are not going to be hampered in any way by the size of the lot or the size of the two apartments and it is my intention to keep things up to the city code - to comply with them and to do it in a legal way. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: You've got five living there now? MR. SLATTERY: Yes . Five that I know of. MS. DE COMBRAY: And the parking is one car behind the other in the driveway? MR. SLATTERY: Yes and you can get four small cars or you can get three large cars in there, and it 's graveled and adjacent to the house, with a large front and back yard. MS. DE COMBRAY: Is there any way to make the driveway bigger, longer? MR. SLATTERY: I don' t know- - I didn' t know that was a problem I 1 I� Ii 5 - until just now and there is a - and the man next door is Mr. Avramis and last year he had a bulldozer next door and I kind of i think he probably went to the line and there is still an area be- tween his lot and the lot we are talking about tonight. So I might have a few feet. Mr. Miller did the survey of it and I coul check and see if I do have enough room to come over another cars length, if so then I would have enough for six cars, if that was the case. My main thing, to be honest, is the safety of somebody living up there. I would not want to be responsible for an acci- dent that could happen. i MR. GAINEY: Well you could lock the door and you wouldn' t have any accidents . MR. SLATTERY: Well then I have no access to store things there if I wanted to . . . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Well , you keep the key and don't give it to your tenants , so it ' s storage for you but not for - your upstairs ten- ants wouldn' t have access to it. MR. SLATTERY: There might be times , right now they use that third floor for storage and for that kind of thing so for me to do that then it becomes an area where they say, can I leave this here or can I leave that there, people from the first floor want to leave things there . . . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Conceeded it is more inconvenient for you but if safety is really a worry for you then there are ways that you can out keep them/without having to police it all the time . MR. SLATTERY: Well it kind of would be - I would have to police it a lot more than I normally would have to. In fact if somebody called me up at 11 : 00 and said my something is up on the third floor, would you mind running over to get it - if somebody wanted to live there it wouldn' t be difficult for them to change - not to change the lock but to certainly get a key. MR. ANGELL : Well if somebody lived there, Frank, you wouldn' t have any increased storage - then where would your storage be? MR. SLATTERY: Well I still would have room up there for storage. There are two room s , front and back which exceed the code - or i' 6 - what is the minimum required for the code by more than twenty fee from the 516" drop - whatev er that is of 5 ' drop has to come in and within just that boundary it exceeds it by better than twenty fee so there is quite a bit more than that because it does slope down. There is a large middle area between these two bedrooms - the bed- rooms are in front and back - there is another area behind there that is ample - that is used now for storage plus it could be an area in the middle. The third floor is as large as the second floor. MR. GAINEY: As it exists right now there is two rooms , there is no hidden rooms? i MR. ANGELL : No, he just said there was more. MR. SLATTERY: There is a bedroom - there are two separate rooms , one on each end of the house and the middle area between those two rooms is a large area which is where I would like to and there is a large area there where a window is now where I would put a door f in for the fire escape out and from talking with the inspector that I went up with me , he said this is where the fire escape would have to go. MR. GAINEY: You don' t have any thoughts of making this third floor into a separate apartment do you? MR. SLATTERY: No. Then I would need to be R-31, I believe. To have three apartments . I don' t want to go into that expense either of putting in a bath up there and all that. To do it now is going to be something where I am going to have - it ' ll be considerable money to do it but for the safety and for my own economical reasons it ' s certainly feasible. MR. GAINEY: What you are offering then is a three bedroom and a four bedroom? MR. SLATTERY: That ' s what I would like to offer - all within the framework of the city regulations . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: And the area variance is required because of the fire escape? MR. SLATTERY: Yes. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: You are doing some alteration and you aren' t ,I changing the exterior dimensions of the house or anything but there are existing deficiencies that you are not getting . . . MR. SLATTERY: If it was possible to put the fire escape in front or back I wouldn' t have that but the - and I 'm not sure I 'm going to have that problem. He wasn't exactly sure when he came up with me - he said you might be able to get the fire escape to drop this way or that way or off to the side . MS. DE COMBRAY: Would that fire escape serve the second floor too? MR. SLATTERY: Yes , it could. The way he described it to me was he thoughtwould be the best way of doing it and that ' s what I would comply with. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Are there further questions from members of the Board? SECRETARY HOARD: Our records do show that the two rooms that he is talking about were finished off when he bought the house. MR. SLATTERY: Yes , they were. SECRETARY HOARD: Well before now. MR. SLATTERY: One thing last week at the Planning Board they were very concerned about the zoning but I question just looking at the map, why the line is drawn where it is drawn. Why it doesn' t ex- tend to Mitchell Street where every other house around it is an R-3 and this house for a front and back yard as I said, the depth is - for living, for day to day living, there is no comparison be- tween that ,and I would say almost any other house on College AVen e. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Even if you were simply wishing to pick up one property along Mitchell you wouldn' t be included - alright , I mean, there is one further property? MR. SLATTERY: Yes , there is a house next to it, closer to Mitchell . But everything that I can see on the map is R-3 and I can see - I don' t live far, I live almost within 200 feet of it, but it is an entirely different neighborhood once you cross Mitchell Street . You come from a residential to a student centered area. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Any further questions? Anything you want to add? MR. SLATTERY: Not yet. MS. DE COMBRAY: I 'm just concerned with the parking. That is a it "i I , 8 - 1' problem. When I went by there there were three cars there and they I! were really smashed in there - there was no room for another car. MR. SLATTERY: Three cars? Three cars is no problem. 1� MS. DE COMBRAY: Right, but if they add another car? i MR. SLATTERY: A fourth car? Then it would have to be - you woul have to park on the street. Unless - I didn' t know that was a prob- lem until I was just informed now by Mr. Hoard, I though I had me all city requirements that way. It 's a possibility I could - I guess I could - it ' s a large front lawn, I 'm sure I could - the guy next door just put a bulldozer through his and just made it a big parking space . Maybe I ought not say that. I 'm trying to do this thing legally and within the . . . SECRETARY HOARD: When I was up there last week there was one car parked in the driveway and it didn't look so bad but then when I went back today and there were three cars and I could get an accurate count of how many were there. MR. SLATTERY: And there is one of those that is a small car and two like are medium sited cars . But you can get three in there without any interference with pedestrians or . . . I 'm willing to d that I mean, if I can can you use your front lawn or part of it on the other side to put a parking place in? I don' t know. I 'm willing to do whatever has to be done to meet the - my obligations and whatever your rules are. MS. DE COMBRAY: What about along the side of the house? Are you allowed to or even further back? SECRETARY HOARD : It ' s a concrete wall when you get back there a ways. tMR. SLATTERY: Yes there is a - the house jets out there a little bit. On the other side there is a possibility . . . MR. ANGELL: In order to increase the parking there you would have to give him another curb cut , is that it? SECRETARY HOARD: Well I think you would have to give him another. . . CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Well three is all the Ordinance would require for this , right? MR. SLATTERY: It says one for every three and there are three i' 9 - and I 'm having seven people so that ' s where I thought I was cer- tainly within the . li ' ' I SECRETARY HOARD: Well the problem is that it says that one can' t I maneuver or you can' t have more than two in a line. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Right , okay. So three would suffice but you don' t have a legal three. i MR. SLATTERY: Right. The two people. . . SECRETARY HOARD: The reason its written that way is there is ant' assumption that more than two in a row, they wouldn't bother movin them, they would start parking them in the street, but it sounds i like they are using it three in a row, if you saw three in a row. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Are there any further questions? I think we' understand your appeal . MR. SLATTERY: Okay. Can I wait for the answer to that or is it going to be awhile? CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Sure. Well , it will take as long as it will take but it is our only case so you can wait outside . Now, do you wish to be heard on this case this evening (speaking to a lady in the audience) ? No? MR. SLATTERY: And you are aware that I sent that letter to every- one within the boundary limits of 200 feet and I didn't get any negative . . . SECRETARY HOARD: We did get one response. CHAIRMAN MARTIN: Alright, let me read this response: "2/24/79 "Unless Mr. Slattery has provided off street parking for all tenants we object to the proposed variance. "Signed: Marylou Kieffer & Robert Kieffer 117 Linden Avenue Ithaca, New York 14850" CHAIRMAN MARTIN: I see no one else to be heard on this appeal - then I conclude that that ends our public hearing. We' ll go into executive session to deliberate and reconvene to announce the results . SECRETARY HOARD: Appeal No. 1251 has been postponed on the request fof the applicant. it t i - 10 - I BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS CITY OF ITHACA, NEW YORK COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS MARCH 5, 1979 EXECUTIVE SESSION APPEAL NO. 1250 MR. GAINEY: I move that the variances applied for in appeal no. 1250 be denied. DR. GREENBERG: I second the motion. FINDINGS OF FACT: 1) A use variance is required and the appellant failed to show hardship. 2) The property is deficient in off-street parking. 3) The appellant' s concern with unauthorized occupancy of the third floor can be met by other means than permitting occupancy by a variance. He can lock the door. VOTE : 5 Yes; 0 No; 1 Absent . Unanimously denied. i ii ii i - a !i I , Barbara Ruane , Do Certify that I took the minutes of the Board a of Zoning Appeals , City of Ithaca, in the matters of Appeal num- bered 1250 on March 5 , 1979 at City Hall , City of Ithaca, New Yor ; that I have transcribed same , and the foregoing is a true copy of I. the transcript of the minutes of the meeting and the Executive Session of the Board of Zoning Appeals, City of Ithaca, on the above date, and the whole thereof to the best of my ability. I � r f 3 Barbara C. Ruane i Recording Secretary I Sworn to before me this day of , 1979 . CALLISTA F. PAOLANGELI Notary Public, State of New York No. 4664561 Qualified in Tompkins Count yy Term Expires lurch 3Q, ?9 Y1O I � ` Notary Public E,