The Board of Zoning Appeals met 03/21/2022 and took up the variance request from the owner of a property of a corner lot on John Street.
Kevin currently has a detached garage on his property which is in very poor condition and not worth saving. He wanted to build an attached garage which would allow him to not have to trek across 50’ of wet or snowy ground in the winter to get to and from his car with his kids. The problem, however, was that the new attached garage would end up being somewhere between 12-16’ feet from the front yard property line, but city code requires buildings to be at least 20 feet back. The cost of tearing down the current garage and rebuilding it would be double or triple to cost of building a new attached garage. Kevin understood that finances were not supposed to factor into determining if a hardship existed for the purposes of granting a variance but, he wondered if maybe it could be considered given how crazy building costs were right now.
When I first posted about this meeting, I had wondered why the property owner couldn’t essentially just bump the garage over and attach it to the east side of the house instead of the north side as depicted in the diagram he had submitted. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The Chairman of the Board of Zoning Appeals had exactly the same question, and after some discussion about it, Kevin thought it was a good option, and was going to go home and take some measurements. Although the Board did vote to deny his variance request, he was not disappointed and left thinking that they had, perhaps, solved his problem.
The discussion was somewhat more in-depth than that synopsis. There were a few different problems that were discussed.
In looking at the diagram of the property, it was clear that there was space to build a compliant attached garage off of John Street instead off the side-street like the current garage was located. There were, however, practical issues that went with having a garage and driveway off of John Street. John Street is a much busier street, with traffic becoming quite heavy during pick-up and drop-off times at East High School. In fact, at some point, there used to be an attached garage off of John Street, but it sounded like that had been turned into part of the house and then the newer garage had been erected off the side street prior to when Kevin bought the house. He thought perhaps the traffic issues on John Street were what prompted that change, and he noted that he was actually trying to change his mailing address to the side street instead of being a John Street property because the garage and front door were both off of the side street.
His hope was to build an attached garage to the north of his house which would bring the edge of his house closer to the side street. The plans were not finalized. The garage would either be the same width as the house or extend past the side of the house toward the driveway. He would use the same driveway and connect it to his new garage and eventually tear down his old garage which was in poor condition with a cracked foundation and moldy insulation.
At that point Chairman Paul McCann asked the question I myself had had which was why didn’t he match the north edge of his house as it currently sat and build an attached garage to the east without moving closer to the property line. How would that impact the use of his home?
Kevin had three windows and a sliding door on that side of the house. There was also a fairly large tree in that area. He had two other trees on his property that had to come down, one due to the emerald ash borer and one because it was leaning heavily in one way. As a result, he would prefer not to have to take down that other tree that was in good condition.
Chairman McCann suggested that he wouldn’t have to follow the north line of the house exactly but could bump the garage out to the north while still staying within the 20’ setback boundary.
His house was currently 34’ from the sidewalk, so he could build up to 14’ to the north and still meet the city’s setback requirements. He could build a 24’ wide garage while only encroaching on 10’ of his house. He would also possibly have the option to build back to the entrance of his house and have back of the garage go right into the house.
Kevin said he hadn’t considered that, and it wasn’t a terrible idea. He would have to go home and measure the tree.
It was pointed out that the benefit of this plan would be that he could both get the size garage he really wanted while also not even needing a variance. It would also reduce the amount of concrete he would need to add to the property.
Chairman McCann said that, ultimately, it appeared that there were reasonable alternatives on this property to fit what he wanted without having encroach on the setback. Board member Sperl noted that this was a larger corner lot than a lot of the corner lots they see which gave Kevin more options.
Board member Kevin Loosen pointed out that another benefit of building the garage like this would be that it would make the back yard more private.
Chairman McCann also noted that he’d also be able to keep the windows that would otherwise have been covered up by an attached garage and finished by saying, “It just seems like there’s an opportunity here to do something that wouldn’t require making it a non-compliant situation.”
Kevin wondered how quickly he would be required to remove the old garage after the new garage was torn down. There was some discussion that happened partially off microphone, but the end consensus seemed to be that he wouldn’t get an order right away to remove that other garage. Kevin was glad for that because he was trying to stagger his costs and have a little time in between spending money on a new garage and spending money to tear down the old one. [I will say, I drew a little diagram that seems to fit with the things I heard discussed during the meeting. Admittedly, it could be completely wrong because I couldn’t actually see them pointing to the diagram—my picture is just based on their words—but it looks to me like Kevin might not be able to access his new garage unless he tears down the old one, so he may have to bite the bullet and pay for the tear down more quickly than he would prefer.]
The board went on to vote. For the purposes of the vote, board member Sperl made a motion to approve the variance but it was stressed to Kevin that the board made motions in the affirmative whether they intended to approve the variance or not because approval of a variance required 4 yes votes. They didn’t want him to get his hopes up.
The board did then go on to vote 0-4 against the motion to approve. Kevin was not unhappy however. He understood that he had been asking a lot with his original variance request, and, regardless, they may have solved his problem anyway so it all worked out.
[Asking to build 12’ from the property line when the limit was 20’ was kind of a big ask, particularly given that there did seem to be options to build a compliant structure on the property. I do think that, if Kevin goes back, takes measurements, and finds out that, in order to keep his healthy tree, he needs to encroach on the setback by 1’ or 2’ he might find more success making that variance request.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/DepartmentDetail.aspx?ID=21308&GUID=426D8248-7E82-4296-B0BA-A36DE5C1ED8A
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