At the March 8 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board, two applications were reviewed:
The first application, by the owner of property at 55 West 34th St., was a continuation of Applicant’s appearance at the January 11 meeting of the Board. The applicant had sought a floor area ratio (FAR) variance for a newly constructed cabana and three variances for minor setback encroachments. At that time, the Board wanted to know the FAR of the house on the property so they would have a precise measure of the FAR relief the Applicant was seeking. At that time the Applicant did not have the requested FAR.
Applicant at the March 8 meeting provided the FAR for the house when built and the FAR now that includes the cabana. The Board approved the variance for the FAR and for the three minor setback variances.
The second application was by Dandra, LLC, for property in the dunes at 5609 Dune Drive. The Applicant intends to build a new house on the property with the same footprint as the existing house.
Applicant was not seeking any variances. However, Avalon’s Beach Dune Ordinance requires the Applicant to demonstrate that any construction activity in the dunes will comply with such ordinance. Thus, testimony was presented from numerous expert people including the architect, the flood plan manager and the construction manager. The application was approved.
Next, the Board heard several ideas from the Board engineer for providing overlay zoning that could possibly permit restaurants and a boutique hotel in the B-1 business zone. This discussion will be continued by the Board before it develops more concrete plans on how to proceed.
Members of the public expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that the Board’s discussion of the overlay zoning idea was not always audible. One person urged the Board to display documents and exhibits on the monitors so that the public could view them.
Two questions asked of the Board went unanswered. The first was who requested the Board to again take up the issue of a boutique hotel. The second question was asking for the Board to provide a timeline as to when it would live stream the Board’s meetings.
