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Home My WebLink AboutMN-BZA-1975-11-03 BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS, CITY OF ITHACA, CITY HALL, ITHACAO NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 39, 1975 At a regular meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals, City of Ithaca, held in Common Council Chambers, City Hall, Ithaca, New York, on November 3, 1975: PRESENT Peter Martin, Chairman Gregory Kasprsak John Bodine C. Murray VanMarter Edison Jomw4 Building Commissioner, Secretary Christine Smith, Recording Secretary Elva Holman ABSENT Edgar Gasteiger Chairman Martin opens meeting, listing members of Board present and stating that one member is absent and it takes four rotes one way or the other for an appeal and anyone wishing to hold their case over to the next time in hopes of having a full Board present may do so. This Board is operating under the provisions of the City Charter of the City of Ithaca and a$ provisions of the Zoning Ordinances; the Board shall not be bound by strict rules of evidence in the conduct of this hearing, but the determination shall be founded upon sufficient legal evidence to sustain the same. The Board requests that all participants identify themselve as to name and address, and confine their discussions to the pertin- ent facts of the case under consideration. Please avoid extraneous material which would have a delaying effect. Appeal No. 1100: Appeal of Omoga Tau Sigma of 200 Willard Way for an area variance under Section 30.23 Col. 12 in a Rw2 district under the Zoning Ordinances of the City of Ithaca. DR. DONALD LEIN: I live at 12 Hunters Lane, Ithaca, New York. I' an alumnus of Omega Tau Sigma at 200 Willard Way. Frank Martorana who is the President of the active chapter there at 200 Willard Way,, is with as tonight. Before I start out I do have some drawings of our added addition that we'd like to present to you tonight for a. variance since we are infringing on this 20 foot setback, so if I could hand out one of these to each one of you. The quality of the paper here isn't the greatest but hopefully it will show. The fraternity of Omega Tau Sigma has considered this for the last year or so and has gone to a contractor and also to an architect which 2 i these drawings have been made by this architect. We have worked before with Stewart & Bennett and Stewart and Bennett has looked ato this, ok'd the plan itself and I'm here on the behalf of the alumdxI to see if we could get, a variance for a building permit and then I will return to the alumini with the answer from this Board at our next meeting which will be in January to report on this and from that standpoint we will initiate action for a building if a varime was given. The first part of the drawing as you see it and even before I even get to that possibly all of you are familiar with Willard Way and you do get an education looking up all of this material. I wasn't familiar with Willard Way even living at' the house as an undergraduate, I always thought I was on University Ave instead of Willard Way and here we aro coming across Stewart Avenue up towards the campus dora,s if you can see here and Willard Way is of course, the two way street that goes down and connects with University. University is the one way street that cues up into the University itself. We sit on the corner hereat Willard Way. At this point, I think that you all remember that you mak* a right hand turn or a left hand tura to go down into the town, you look directly into Omega Tau Sigma, actually right into the door. There is a hedge row that runs right along the sidewalk in this and up in front of the house. The addition that we are talking about is planned now on this drawing as coming here on the south side of this building and there is of course where we infringe on the 20 foot setback code. We originally had looked at it from the stand-* point of building back into the lot on the apposite side, the nm side. There is a parking lot now that we utilise for the active ambers that live in the house. The access of this building which is proposed as additional dining room space and also a recreation room. If we gent from the north side, it does not make a con- venient connection to our dining room. There is a large kitchen between this area and really the access to it is not that satis. factory as to the south side. We would also loose a great deal of our parking which we do used to get off the street. If we go to the west of this which is towards the lake, the lake is sitting r F � k. � .�a � r � .� e ; � r y ka a r r ► r i a a a # :'7 AI' r # 4 That is not clear to me. DR. LEIN: I'm not sure, if I could have that big map I was using..,. MR. MARTIN: The basic lot size itself would not conform with the current zoning so that. .... ... MR. JONES: Actually it is a deficient lot for a fraternity right today. • MR. MARTIN: Yes. DR. LEIN: If we went on this sides you are taping about at this time where the proposed side is over here to the............ MR. MARTIN: You went into the parking lot, you could do it. DR. LEIN*. I think that we would be legal at that point except...... MR. MARTIN: In terms of setback DR. LEIN: Yes. MR. MARTIN: You mould still have a deficiency size lot but you would be able to deal with the setback problem. MR. KA.SPRZAK: How large is the lot in total? DR. NEIN: That Its not too familiar. . .. .. MR. MARTIN: 2Og5OO sq. feet we are told by the planning board. DR. LEIN: It is an odd shaped lot anyways. It's deceiving to loo at the back lot line here, it doesn't look like we have that Much room with the topography the way that it is but I could be wrong. I'm looking at three hedges along here so maybe we own further down that hillside than what I think we do at this point. MR. MARTIN: Are there further questions from members oF eHoard? MRS. HOLMAN: How many people are you currently serving in the din- ing room? Imo.. LEINs Right now our current problem is not an everyday problem. We have 17 members that live in that is all that we can have live in with the fire code and the university code for the house that they say we do have. They do eat in daily and their contract is such so that they do eat in. So the dining room adequately takes care of that. We do have 75 active members. These are the students that belong to the fraternity are dorm there in probbbly in a weekly situation or possibly 3 times a month. They also use the L I house recreational wise too. So it does become a problem at that point. Our dining room comfortably if we set it all up will hold 50 comfortably. We have put 75 in there I think, which is very close and difficult to serge. When the alumini come back which we always have an annual meeting in January, alumni weekend and usually some fall functions we basically turn away almost all them because we do not have the room at that time to work with them. We have clot of alumni that are on staff that do go down their to be with the students and so we could utilize this room for many things as far as recreation, meetings and our dining room faciliti s. I mould say that probably 3 times a month we would utilise it to fall capacity. This has been more an idea of the alumni, than the active members who are of course, much for it but financially coin not awing it. It was the alumni that brought it in, the idea of trying to get this extra room and possibly add better lines to the house. MRS. HOLMAN: Thank you, you have answered my questions. MR. MARTIN: Any additional questions? Does that conclude your presentation? Anyone who wants to speak in favor? Anyone in opposition? That concludes our hearing in this case. i 6 BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS, CITY OF ITNACA, EXECUTIVE SESSION NOVEMBER 39 1975 APPEAL NO. 1140: Mr. Kaspracak: I move to grant the area variance. Firs. Halm8n: I second t* motion. FINDINGS OF FACTS 1) Proposed addition encroaches on the front yard, the second fro t yard approximately half the distance between the two intersect- ions. 2) Plans have been made to limit this to one story height, which makes the addition a reasonable proportion to the overall structure. 3) No adjoining lots or opposing lots are oriented so that they face the subject property, 4) Existing landscape and proposed landscaping were stated as an attempt to keep the total building in a character similar to that which now exists. 5) Testimony showed that the slope of the lot, made addition to the west impractical. Vote: Yes - 5 No -. 0 Application has been granted. 7 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, CHRISTINE SMITH, DO CERTIFY that I took the minutes of the BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS, CITY OF ITHACA, in the matters of Appeal No. 1100 on November 3, 1975, at City Hall, City of Ithaca, Now York, that I have transcribed , and the foregoing is a tree copy of the transcript of the minutes of ih a meeting and tbo Executive Session of the Board of Zoning Appeals, City of Ithaca, on the above date, and the mole thereof to the beat of racy ability Christine Recording Secretary Sworn to before me this day ofDV&86�.�. ► 19 7 5. a ,c JOSEPH A RUNDLE Notary Public, State of New Yor`.- No. 55-4507134 Qualified in Tompkins Count Term Expires March 30, 19