Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll call the uh May 13th Board of Zoning Appeals uh meeting to order. Uh David, I'm going to do roll call. Uh Pete Saunders, Vicky Growski, present. Mark Danielson, present. Brian Cer, here. Nate LS present. Four present. Thank you. Um, we have a meeting. Do we have a uh anything to talk about with our meeting minutes from last? I'll make a motion to approve the meeting meeting minutes from last month. I'll second. We have a motion, a second. All in favor? I I motion passes. Um our first uh variance this evening is to bring the minimum front yard set back from 25 ft to 17 ft. The petitioner step forward. State your name and address, please. Herman Payton, 401 Rockwood Street, Leaport. Thank you. Um, I have a garage that needs to come down because a tree hit it. The insurance company says it needs to come down and I want to rebuild, but I want to rebuild larger. And my setback is going to be now 17 ft instead of 25. The garage will be 24 by 30. So that's basically it. So, the current is 18 by 18. 18 by 18. Uh, from the back of the property, it's 3 foot off. And I'm going to extend it

from uh 18 to 30 out. Okay. Which which hits the 17. Yep. And then instead of 18 wide, it's going to be 24 wide. Great. going towards the house. Mhm. So, we're coming to the street and going towards the house. We're not going over towards the other property. Gotcha. What are you going to do with all this extra room? Just to so I can get my vehicles in a garage now. It's full of I can't I can't I got to park on the street or you know, it's just need my vehicles need to go in a garage. Jeff Bachelor's going to be really happy to hear that. So, good news. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Um David, do you want to give us a summary? Yeah. So item number four, variance of development standards 25-04 petition is just uh so is to reduce the minimum front yard setback from 25 ft. Sorry, sir. Sir, sir, sit sit real quick and then we'll we'll approve it and then you can leave. I promise. And nobody wants to be here longer than you. I know, but just wait for a second. Yep. Thank you. So, it's to reduce the minimum front yard setback from 25 ft to 17 ft along the south property line. Um, as you can see on the petitioner's site plan that is provided. Um, Rockwood and Warren Street is the cross street and he is requesting from the Warren Street property line. Um, this parcel is is currently has a house on it, an existing garage. Um the proposed location for the detached garage is in the technically what you call the side street front yard of a corner lot is termed in the zoning ordinance which is required to meet the front yard setbacks of the zoning district that it's within. Um and so

just really briefly um the petitioner's requested size does meet the maximum area limitation for a detach accessory building of a maximum of 721 square ft. Um the so the decision criteria that you are to review with these requests is the approval will not be injurous to the public health, safety, morals and general welfare of the community. Um, this proposed building is located in an area that is is no closer than the front of the house, as you can see there. Um, and just showing some of the photos that I took of the site. This is from the Rockwood Street front yard. You can see the existing houses along uh Warren Street. And then this is the existing garage. As you can see, kind of in line with where the cars are parked would roughly be where the garage would be. Um, and then this is just showing the setback between the side area. um which is a minimum of three feet from the side and the back property line as the petitioner has indicated on his attached site plan. Um and then the separation between the the garage and the house is a minimum of 10 ft which uh is indicated on the site plan. Um two that the use and value of the area adjacent to the property will not be affected in a substantially adverse manner. um the proposed use for uh personal storage for the detached garage um will not affect the surrounding properties um in a negative manner. Three, the strict application of the terms of the zoning ordinance will constitute an unnecessary hardship if applied to the property for which the variance is sought. Um the strict application of the terms of the zoning ordinance would result in a reasonable uh difficulty in the use of the property for personal storage. Um because the property is situated on a corner lot with a no not really much of a backyard there. Um side street there along uh the Rockwood Street between the house to the north. Um and so it would

not otherwise be able to construct the garage in its location um within the maximum area limitations. So staff does find that the requested variance of development standards petition conforms to the goals and policies of the countywide land development plan. The requested variance to reduce the minimum front yard setback from 25 ft to 17 feet along the south property line. Uh, so staff recommends approval of the petitioner's request to reduce the minimum front yard setback on a corner lot side street from 25 ft to 17 feet along the south property line as as regards to variance of development standards petition 25-04 and then I'll answer any questions if you have them. Thank you. Um, at this time I'll open it up for public comment. And with no public comment, we'll close this section. Um, staff. I have no questions. No. I'll uh I'll make a motion to approve the request. I'll second. All in favor? I I Motion passes. Mr. Payeyton, you can leave now. Congratulations. Thank you. The next petition to step forward, please. Good evening, Mr. President, members of the board. I'm Dave Ambers, attorney here in town with an office at 601 State Street, Sweet B. I'm here on behalf of Maple City Packaging. Uh they're a company that moved here back in around 2021 from Illinois. Uh so we stole a good one. Um, and now they would like to expand upon their property up on Highway 39 North. We're asking for two variances. Um, just to give you a little

background, back in 2021, uh, my client had to get a variance to put the packaging company there. They packaged baby powder and um, the county granted that unanimously. Now that the city has annexed the property, my client has the need to expand his business. So, we're here for a variance. The first one on your agenda is to allow expansion of the existing powder manufacturing facility. Even though it's in R1B, everything across the street across Highway 39's heavy industrial, you've got the storage in the electric union building to the north, the car lot quote storage area, whatever you call that, south of the vioadoc um to the south. Um, so they'd like to the variance to continue and to expand. Then the second variance would be to reduce the landscape setback from 50 ft to 20 ft on the south. Um, David, you'll see in his staff report, changed our original request to meet the vegetation that's out there now to the 20T instead of 10. And then on the east side, a 10- foot landscape barrier instead of 50 to keep in line with the landscaping that's already there. Screening my client's facility from the few residential houses that are out in that neighborhood. Second part of the development st standards variance is to reduce parking from 50 to 20. um you know based on square footage of the building they would need 50 under the ordinance given real life and the number of employees they have at their business they can get by easily with 20 parking spaces. Um I'm not going to read the standards for granting the variance to you. David covers those well and he covered them in

his staff report. Um but we believe that the both petitions match the ordinance won't unduly compromise the comprehensive plan and let a new employer for the community continue to grow and expand his business. If you have any questions specific to the business, Mr. Costco is here. He'll answer those. He knows baby powder. I know paper. Thank you. Uh do you want to do questions now or do you want to wait until after your sort? Um so you're you're asking for a variance for the amount of parking obviously uh you're expanding the business. Will you have more employees or are you keeping your employees around the same? Initially the employee amount will remain the same. Yep. Um, however, the customer that is approaching me with this additional business, which is what necessitates the uh addition of the building, um, they are pushing me to to uh expand uh to a a second shift uh at least in the short term, right? Um, until the space is needed so that I can have enough inventory in order to keep the lines producing on a daily basis. Right now, the lack of space prohibits me from bringing in the amount of material I need in order to keep the lines running 5 days a week as it is. This additional space would potentially allow um for a second shift to be staffed on a regular basis. However, I don't think when I fully get up and going that that will be necessary. At least I'm really hoping not. Um but that's Yeah, that's I hope I hope for your sake and for our sake in the community that does happen and your growth continues to

to thrive here because that's exciting. Um, anytime we see growth like this happen, that's that's great. Um, we increase employees in our petition. I believe it's 18 now. You would go to 25 with the second shift. Yes. Yeah. Great. Um the the other question or or the other comment I had was you know you're in an area that you know we we you're now new into the city. Yes. Um and as we're kind of figuring out all of how all that works together, zoning laws. I appreciate uh all the companies out there, all the people out there that are being patient and figuring this out with us and uh we're excited about this kind of hand and glove relationship and growth going forward because we believe that that can really happen. So, thanks so much for for petitioning and growing with us. Sure. And I know in regards to both of the variances, there are some conditions. Are you aware of those? Are you okay with those? Yes. Okay. Let's have let's have David give us the summary that we were all aware. So item number five break this down because there's a lot going on here. Use variance 25 is specifically to allow the expansion of the existing power manufacturing diesel. what was previously approved when it was in the port county 2021 as your package and described by members. Um the expansion includes all future buildings included on the site plan as you see so kind of outlined is also included in your package as well. My impression is number one is the most important building. That is correct. And then there are that the fill in. Um, if you want to

touch on number three on number three is a long-term wish list type of thing. Um, I wasn't exactly sure what type of challenges there may be with the with the number one building. So, the number three would have been choice number two as those are the areas of the lot that allow for the most area to be constructed under roof. Um, but ideally the number one is that that's if I can get that, the rest of it I can make do without if need be. But the number one is is really uh instrumental to what it is that I'm trying to accomplish. And so I met with Mr. Mr. Costco on May 2nd at the property just to get an idea of what's going on there. And I wanted to walk through some of the pictures, but we did discuss at that time that number in the site plan would potentially take more variances because of the potential setbacks to the uh drive and 39 shouldn't be an issue on the 39 side as far as setback kind of more on the side of going through the um item number six Just briefly touching on that because that the variance of development standard 25 position is to reduce the minimum landscape setback to 10 ft on the south and east property boundaries because the properties that are east are residential as described by the zone and south as well. Um the south property is located outside of the city limits. Um there's along indicated by a long driveway as you can see that goes from state road 39 north there. Um and then

the second part of that variance is to reduce the minimum parking requirements from 50 parking spaces to 20 parking spaces because of proposed square footage that petitioner has. Um so without further ado, I'll just go through some of the staff analysis that we went through. Um staff did meet with attorney Ambers and Mr. Costco review city engineer and myself met with him to go over some potential things with the site one of which was drainage um and how everything is going to work together with future building increases so one of those drainage plan um I didn't add it to the conditions but that could be a potential condition is what would be required issued for the building to make sure dra was adequately So just wanted to cover that real quickly. Uh the second part of this and laser pointer here. Um so discussing the landscape setbacks on the south and east side. As you can see the driveway that I was mentioning property staff has a a 20 foot wide landscape buffer to allow for spacing of trees because there is an existing on a neighbor's property to the south. They want to interfere with that to allow more space for trees to be located in a space where the building would be roughly about 20 ft away from the property line anyway. Um, and so you can see that one there. So that goes to roughly where the building corner would be. Um, as you can see on this map, it says the existing building is located here. Um, and then the composed building, you'd like an L shape there. Um, on the east side, staff does suggest

a 10 foot landscape buffer. Um, if there's any future development residential to provide a continuation of landscaping along the new portion of the building, what's already proposed on the site. Um, just going through some of the the photos that we took on the site. This is looking from drive is currently in gravel. Um it is uh in the city's interest to pave driving in the near future. Um and so that will be an access that will need to be part of service approach as staff is um within a reasonable amount of time frame as as the road is not. This is looking towards where the building would be located kind of exactly pretty much almost right where the red cursor is close to where the going to be if not a little bit to the right of that. Um, and so the 10 foot landscape area would just go straight back along the left side of this image here just past the tree and continue down that way. This is the proposed location of the building, the new building. This is the existing building on the back of the property that was added shortly after This is looking so you can see kind of laying in the grass there. That's where the building we walked it off and measured it. That's where kind of the building according to the plan. Um and then again this just shows kind of the edge of where that proposed building would be. Um there's an existing drain kind of about 10 ft or 10 or 15 feet to the left of that image. As you can see in that there lines

are this is showing where kind of an alignment where the 20ft step back would be for the building edge. Um so you can see existing buildings on the property. And then this just shows where the trees can be filled in along that line. This again just shows the existing building to the line in line with the proposed building located. kind of shows that again showing the landscape area there just a couple more as far as the existing uses in the area storage units and commercial business across street to the west few industrial properties as well as um a house as well um so the property is served by access points. So both of which in the future would be required if hard surface asphalt coming off the asphalt road there. Um and then this just shows the existing sign there which is allowed to stay as proposed in the recommended conditions. Staff does recommend approval of both various requests and I can read the conditions for you um or we can have discussion if you would like. Thank you. Mr. Leco, how how how soon are you wanting to get this started cost

within as soon as possible? I mean, I have a a uh the building that we added a couple years ago. I've already spoken with that contractor. Um I have a quote from him. I am not sure at this point what uh his schedule is like. I know he has been very busy in Leaport County over the last couple years. I see he has told me of all the buildings he's been putting up in Leaport County. I I've seen his signs out in front of projects that that he's been doing. Um I would hope I would really hope that I would uh be able to have uh construction completed by year end. Okay. And then also too, just to verify, you had mentioned a second shift. Just to verify, there won't be any truck traffic during that second shift. There will be no shipping and receiving conducted on the second shift. If there's a second shift, if there's a second shift, it's it's important for us, right, even if we even if and when we approve this, that, you know, the people that are seeking it seek to be good neighbors as well. So, I appreciate that you're you're doing that. Sure. Any other? No. Um, at this time I'll open it up for public comment. And with that, I'll close public comment. Um, do we want to divide this into the two sections that it is? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we should probably vote on the first one and then the second one. I'll make a motion to approve the first one with the conditions um that were were in place by the city if if you're okay with that and you're aware of those. Yes. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second that. Uh we have a motion and second. All in favor? I I be clear that's the use variance. Is that

correct? That is the uh Yeah. Uh use variance number 251. Mhm. And then I'll make a motion to approve uh item number six, variance of development standards uh number 255. Second. And that is with the 10 ft and 20 ft setbacks. Yeah. And then with the conditions that were in place for that by city. Yes. Yep. Yep. All in favor? I I pleasure passes. Congratulations. I hope you get that second shift and you just keep on growing here in Leaport. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks for coming here. Um, item seven is old business. Item eight is new business. Item nine is other business. and item 10. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. I'll second. All in favor?