Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutZBA Minutes 2017-11-20 Town of Ithaca Zoning Board of Appeals Monday, November 20, 2017 6:00 p.m. Town Hall ZBA Members Present: Rob Rosen (Chair), Chris Jung, Christine Decker, George Vignaux, Caren Rubin, William Highland Town Staff Present: Bruce Bates, Director of Code Enforcement; Susan Brock, Attorney for the Town; Deb DeAugistine, Deputy Town Clerk Mr. Rosen called the meeting to order at 6:02 p.m. Appeal of David Mountin, 519 Elm St. Ext., TP 29.-7-12.4 requesting a variance from Town of Ithaca Code Section 270-73 C, "Size and area of lot" to be allowed to subdivide the property where a parcel would have a 60 ft width at the front yard setback(50 ft from the street line)where 100 ft is required. Mr. Rosen noted that he served with Mr. Mountin on the Zoning Board of Appeals, but that it would not influence his decision. Mr. Mountin said they bought the 20-acre parcel ten years ago. There are four lots, two of which are landlocked. They want to change the lot lines to make four legally conforming lots and are seeking a variance from the width requirement at the front yard setback to get access to Lot C. Ms. Brock explained that the lot line adjustments are to get road access to all four parcels. A variance is needed for lot C because 50 feet back from the street line, the lot is supposed to have a minimum width of 100 feet, but only has 60 feet. Public Hearing Jack Young owns the property to the south of the Mountin property. He's on the Cayuga Heights ZBA and could not make it to the Planning Board meeting when this subdivision was discussed. This is a tough site to develop with a lot of physical constraints: it has limited access, slope, there's a NYSEG line, a stream/gullet'. It would have been a tough site to develop before stormwater regulations became so important in New York State. He can see why the applicant wants a variance so he can have four lots to sell, but he can't see how it could be granted. One of the most important things a board can do is come up with conditions so you can acknowledge the fact that every lot is unique and that a strict application of the ordinances doesn't always yield equitable results. The ZBA is a safety valve. He can see a couple conditions that could be applied to make it possible to grant the variance. He suggested a couple conditions that they in Cayuga Heights would have done. Back in the 1930s, his and Mr. Mountie's properties were farmed: there was no power line, no substation. You could do what you wanted back then. Nowadays, the stormwater management issues are significant. Someone else built in the back of the lot at 511 Elm Street Extension, much in the way the Mountin proposal would suggest for lot C and D; they had a full 100-foot for frontage and their road works its way down with several curves to get to the house site. That's the best way to work with the terrain and the contours. The stormwater issues are significant for the land downhill, which is his property. He'd like to see one of two options: The first would be to cut the number of curb cuts and bring the access in from Coy Glen. ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 1 The total footage of road required would be the same or less, there would be fewer curb cuts, there'd be less contour to fight, both lots ae large enough that they could share maintenance of a road and not have it infringe on their property. The second would be to come up with a way to get a road down the 60 feet of frontage on Elm Street Extension that would have room for suitable stormwater management facilities. He hopes that with a condition, the board will be able to grant the request. He has no problem with the proposal. He hopes the board comes up with a solution to eliminate the road off Elm Street Extension or mitigates it by leaving room on adjacent lots for stormwater management, which isn't going to leave the burden on the properties downhill, including his own. Mr. Vignaux asked about the driveway on the drawing Mr. Young provided. Mr. Young responded that the 60-foot strip was a right-of-way that had been left for future access in a previous subdivision. The whole area, including his property, had been subdivided into hundreds of lots at one time, only a few of which were built. When he bought his land, he abandoned a 1929 subdivision with over a hundred lots because they were not up to modern standards. That 60-foot strip was designed for a road. It's reasonably steep, but if you have two people sharing the cost and if you work with the entire 60 feet, lot D can only get access through that 60-foot strip, which would be part of lot D in the revised layout. Mr. Rosen closed the public hearing at 6:17 p.m. His initial impression is that the Planning Board, a higher-level authority than the ZBA, approved it. They thought it fit the character of the neighborhood. The ZBA's purview is to determine whether the proposed variance from zoning is acceptable. That's the issue before the board. It's not within our scope to redesign the subdivision or suggest alternative roads. Ms. Brock added that the board is also responsible for doing the assessment of the area variance criteria. Mr. Highland asked about the downside of having only 60 feet instead of 100. Mr. Rosen responded that the neighbors on either side would have less privacy. Ms. Brock said it was an attempt to avoid flag lots. Mr. Rosen said Planning Board has looked at other neighborhoods with flag lots and have determined that it is sometimes acceptable. They looked at this one and thought that from a planning point of view, it would be fine. He agreed there are a lot of other ways to create the subdivision: you could build a road down the middle and have smaller lots going off it, and more of them. But what's in front of the board is this particular situation and whether 60 feet is significantly different than 100 feet, to the point that it would be a detriment to the welfare of the community, and whether it outweighs the benefit to the applicant of doing it this way versus another way. Ms. Brock asked what Mr. Bates looks at for stormwater. Mr. Bates responded that the town engineer determines whether the stormwater is sufficient. ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 2 Mr. Rosen said there's a way to do stormwater management for a 300-foot driveway on this huge piece of land. He asked Mr. Mountin whether he considered locating parcel B all the way to the northeast corner of parcel A. Mr. Mountin said lot B originally had an old house on it that was dilapidated when he bought the land; it still has the foundation with the sewer and gas pipe. Further to the east is the NYSEG easement, so you can't build there. The intention of lot C is to get to the 8-acre lot in back. The town requires stormwater management plans with any development. The lots are buildable as he has presented them. The lots in the proposed design are the most natural in contour for the site without having to do a lot of earth moving. Mr. Rosen said there are many different ways to do subdivision, all of which could be more expensive or worse in some ways. The proposed location for parcel B is economically the most logical: the overhead NYSEG easement interferes much less than if the lot were in the other corner, and there is already water, gas, and sewer piping to the lot. Mr. Young agreed that board can't redesign the plan, but if the second question you have to consider is whether there's an alternative method feasible for the applicant to pursue that gives him the four lots, clearly there is. It could be redesigned in a way that didn't leave you with a 60- foot strip. If that means you can't use an existing foundation—which is probably not going to be usable anyway, and it's unlikely that an old sewer or water line are usable because the regulations have changed. Regarding stormwater management, the hill doesn't slope down with the lot; it slopes off to the side. You're going to have to put a large ditch there to catch the 350 feet of road and funnel it all the way down onto lot C, that water is going to runoff onto lots A and B. These are relevant to the five questions. Question 2: there is an alternative. Questions 1 and 4: there are impacts on the neighborhood if you don't have enough room to put those stormwater management facilities on the 60-foot strip. He highlighted what he thought was an easy solution. The Planning Board is looking at whether the plan meets their technical requirements. The ZBA looks at it from a different standpoint. It's not a case where you can say that if there was a problem, the planning board would have taken care of it, because if it's in the five questions, it's in the ZBA's purview. Mr. Vignaux pointed out that Mr. Young could have raised these points at the Planning Board meeting if he could have attended. Mr. Young said he submitted a written statement to the Planning Board, but there was nobody at the meeting who was present at the earlier planning department meetings involving that property before Mr. Mountin bought it. So no one was there who knew what discussions had taken place and what assurances he was given at the time in respect to one of the Town Board members who was interested in Mr. Young not using some of the access he had to the board member's lot because it would have affected his personal home. Mr. Young thought there would be someone at the Planning Board meeting who remembered that. He didn't expect that someone at the meeting would claim that he builds houses all over the county when he hasn't built a single house in the county. Mr. Rosen said he gets that Mr. Young doesn't build houses, but he own 39 acres adjacent to this lot. He asked Mr. Young whether he lives in the neighborhood. ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 3 Ms. Young said he lived on West Hill in the 1980s. He doesn't live on the lot. Ms. Brock said Mr. Young did send an email to the planning department, who then forwarded it to the planning board before their meeting of September 5th, where he did raise the concerns about a meeting. She read from his email: "Our understanding from discussions with the Planning Board staff when we did our original subdivision in 2004 was that you weren't going to approve any subdivision of what's now the Mountin property that didn't leave future access for adjoining properties, and I would like the Planning Board to consider requiring that to be done before approving this subdivision application. My feeling is that dedicating space for a legally sufficient public road leading from either Elm Street Extension or Coy Glen Road to our property line, located on a developable slope, ought to be a condition of this subdivision approval. If it isn't, it will substantially devalue our adjacent property and run contrary to the principals I was told would apply to the Mountin property before we agreed to sell/donate portions of our original frontage on Coy Glen Road and Floral Avenue to the Town." So the planning board did have that information in front of them before their meeting, and that's why Chris Balestra, the planner, also provided information about what was in Mr. Young's 2004 subdivision application, noting that they would probably need a cul-de-sac, and she said at the meeting that she didn't understand why the issue was being raised because Mr. Young's agent, at the meeting in 2004, said he understood that they'd need a cul-de-sac to develop the property. At that point, they didn't seem to be relying on any type of agreement to get access across what is now the Mountin property. Mr. Young has now replied, saying he wasn't talking about his application to the planning board in 2004, but rather about some other meetings that happened, perhaps around that time with other people. We were just looking at the words of his email to the planning board last month when he said, "Our understanding from discussions with the Planning Board staff when we did our original subdivision in 2004." That's why we went back to that subdivision application and looked at the minutes from that meeting. In his mind, he might have been referring to another meeting. This gives you a sense of what was before the planning board meeting in September. Mr. Rosen said he thinks a 10- or 12-foot-wide driveway running down a 60-foot piece of land will have plenty of room to shed water. We don't have a technical study showing that there would be runoff onto adjacent properties if a driveway were put on that strip. Mr. Vignaux pointed out that onus for the runoff would fall on the owner of the property. Ms. Brock said the level of what they'd have to do is dependent on how much land is being disturbed. There's no development proposal, so we can't speculate. She read from the planning board's SEQR for Mr. Mountie's proposal to the planning board, for which they did a neg dec. Because there was no development plan, their action in approving the subdivision would not result in stormwater discharges onto adjacent properties. Where there's a subdivision and they can reasonably anticipate what will happen as a result of it, they will look at stormwater impacts. Here, because there was no development plan, they had no idea what would be built and where, and they could not assess what the stormwater impacts would be. We have a stormwater law and depending on how much land is disturbed, there are different levels of plans that have to be developed. Mr. Rosen said there are two issues: 1)whether building a driveway on 60-foot strip of land will create a stormwater hazard; and 2)whether the 60-foot strip is so narrow that the driveway will ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 4 be right outside the neighbor's window, affecting their quality of life. None of the neighbors who live there have weighed in on this. A driveway shielded by 20 or 30 feet of space is pretty far from a neighbor's house. His opinion is that neither of these issues is a significant detriment to the health, safety, and welfare of the community. He asked for the opinions of the rest of the board. Mr. Vignaux said he agreed. Ms. Rubin said that in the absence of additional information, she can't agree or disagree and can't find for the argument that there would be a detriment. Ms. Jung said it's hard to predict the future. This is moving lot lines on large properties. The future of what's developed is taken care of by the code and it's not our concern. Mr. Vignaux said this can be used as it stands; if it's not to be used this way, they'd have to come in for permission to rezone. If they want to put 47 houses there, they can't. Ms. Brock pointed out that in the MDR, two-family homes are allowed. There could be a cluster development if the planning board approved it. Mr. Vignaux responded that without additional approval, they could only build one- or two- family homes. Ms. Decker said it's a lot-line change, not a big change to the neighborhood. Looking at the map, there are currently a number of flag lots off Elm Street Extension. And, should they decide to build on the lots, they'll have to meet with the town engineer. That's not our discussion. Mr. Highland agreed with his colleagues. Ms. Brock said it's exempt from SEQR because it's the granting of an individual lot line variance. ZBA Resolution No. 0026-2017 Area Variance 519 Elm St. Ext., TP 29.-7-12.4 November 20, 2017 Resolved that this board grants the appeal of David Mountin, 519 Elm St. Ext., TP 29.-7-12.4 requesting a variance from Town of Ithaca Code Section 270-73 C, "Size and area of lot"to be allowed to subdivide the property where a parcel would have a 60-foot width at the front yard setback(50 feet from the street line)where 100 feet is required, with the following Condition: That the subdivision be done as shown on the presented survey map, and Findings: That the benefit to the applicant does outweigh any detriment to the health, safety, and welfare of the community, specifically: ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 5 I. Although the benefit the applicant wishes to achieve can be achieved by other means feasible, they are not desirable alternatives given the physical constraints of developing the land, such as the overhead power lines, slopes, and a creek in the northeast corner of proposed parcel C, which has a town stream setback that will apply to it; and 2. There will not be an undesirable change in the character of the neighborhood or to nearby properties given that the proposed lot sizes are in character with the neighborhood, there are two other flag lots located across Elm Street Extension, and there are at least two other lots on the same side of Elm Street Extension that appear to have even less of a setback at the 50-foot setback line than parcel C would have; and 3. The request is substantial given that 100 feet is required and 60 feet is provided; and 4. The request will not have adverse physical or environmental effects, as evidenced by the fact that SEQR is not required; and 5. While the alleged difficulty is self-created in that the applicant wishes to subdivide his land in this way, the benefit to the applicant outweighs any detriment to the health, safety, and welfare of the community for the reasons stated above. Moved by Rob Rosen; seconded by George Vignaux Vote Ayes: Rosen, Jung, Decker, Vignaux, and Highland ZBA Resolution No. 0027-2017: Recommend Zoning Board of Appeals Appointments to the Town Board Whereas,the Zoning Board of Appeals has unanimously recommended that Rob Rosen be reappointed as Chair for the year ending December 31, 2018; and Whereas, Chairman Rosen,the Zoning Board of Appeals members, and the Director of Code Enforcement have recommended that the following board members be reappointed: George Vigneaux, Board Member, for a five-year term from 1/1/2018 through 12/31/2022, and Carin Ruben, Alternate Board Member, for a one-year term from 1/1/2018 through 12/31/2018; Now therefore be it Resolved,the Director of Code Enforcement will convey the Zoning Board of Appeals' recommendations to the Town Board for their consideration. Moved by Christine Decker; seconded by Chris Jung Vote Ayes: Rosen, Jung, Decker, Vignaux, and Highland ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg. 6 ZBA Resolution No.0028-2017: 2018 Meeting Schedule Resolved,that the Town of Ithaca Zoning Board of Appeals hereby adopts the following as its schedule for regular meetings for 2018.Unless otherwise noted(*), all meetings will be held the third Monday of every month and will begin at 6:00 p.m.: Meeting Date January 22nd *February 26th March 19th April 16th May 21st June 18th July 16th August 20th September 17th *October 22nd November 19th December 17th Moved by Rob Rosen; seconded by Christine Decker Vote Ayes: Rosen,Jung,Decker,Vignaux, and Highland The meeting adjourned at 7:05 p.m. S ed by Debra DeAugist",Deputtylerk ZBA 2017-11-20 Pg.7