At the May 9 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board, the Board heard an application for rear-yard setback and lot area variances. The subject property is an undersized parcel located at 292 33rd Street. Presently, there is a single family home on the property that has numerous existing nonconformities. The applicant is proposing to build a new home that would eliminate all but two of the nonconformities -- the lot area and the rear-yard setback. Regarding the lot area, there is no adjoining vacant property available that the applicant could acquire to make his lot area conforming. With respect to the rear-yard setback, the Applicant contends that his proposed rear-yard setback is better than the current setback and removing the existing front- and side-yard nonconformities makes it impractical to totally remove the rear yard setback; therefore the variance should be granted under the hardship criteria.
A number of people at the meeting objected to the granting of the variances for various reasons. Consequently, the Applicant’s attorney moved to adjourn the hearing of the application until June 13 to give the Applicant time to consider whether there is anything more that he can do to assuage the public concerns.
Next, the Board Engineer announced that five requests for proposals were sent to appropriate firms for a planning study on incorporating a boutique hotel into the Business (B-l) Zoning District. Of the five, two proposals were submitted, and these are going to be sent to the Borough Council for further consideration.
