With the full Warsaw Board of Zoning Appeals present this month, a petition tabled from February for a variance from development standards to allow two lots to be smaller than required in a Residential-2 zoning district received approval by a 4-1 vote Monday.
At the Feb. 24 BZA meeting, Daniel Schlatter, Inglenook LLC, petitioned for a variance from development standards to allow two lots to be smaller than required for developing a residential lot in a Residential-2 zoning district. Lot 1 is about 5,280 square feet and lot 2 is 5,520 square feet. They do not meet the square footage minimum of 7,200 square feet, per the zoning ordinance. The parcels are surrounded by East Market, East Jefferson and South Wood streets.
At that hearing, board member Dave Baumgartner made a motion to approve the variance and board member Zach Tucker provided the seconded, but the final vote was 2-1 with board member Duane Huffer opposed. Because there were only three of the five board members present and the vote wasn’t unanimous, the petition was then tabled to Monday’s BZA.
Assistant City Planner Jackson Longenbaugh reiterated at Monday’s meeting that it was the opinion of the Warsaw Planning Department that the variance to allow the two smaller lots be approved.
City attorney Scott Reust advised the board, “This is a little bit unique situation in that this came before this board previously and there were not enough votes to take final action one way or the other. So, now we have our full board here. Likely one way or the other, there’s going to be enough votes to take final action one way or the other. But I would remind everybody present that we start fresh tonight. So, whatever he said last time, whatever you guys said last time, we start fresh tonight.”
Schlatter said what he was proposing were single-family homes on the lots.
“We did not have the lot coverage numbers last time. That wasn’t part of the variance, but in the discussion it became clear that was important. And so, we included those,” he said.
Longenbaugh said the first lot had 39% coverage and the back lot was 26%.
“What we’re proposing then fits within the lot coverage. It’s appropriate there. We also noted the setbacks and we are well within the required setbacks that would be typical of that lot size,” Schlatter said. “So the only thing we’re asking for here is that the lots, as they are being sold, they’re five-thousand-some square feet, and Warsaw requires them now to be seven-thousand-and-some square feet.”
He said the plan shows appropriate off-street parking. He provided the board with photos of other projects Inglenook has done that were smaller - 519 to 700 square feet homes. They’ve built a number of smaller homes, 40 by 80 feet, in Winona Lake, which he said sold well. One home, a little more than 600 square feet, sold for $275,000 over a year ago and then resold for $299,000 this past spring.
Board Vice President Rick Keeven asked Schlatter what he thought the price of the homes would be on the smaller lots in question. Schlatter replied, “Our goal is to keep them a little lower than that because we’re trying to meet a need in the community. Right now ... most of the builders in Kosciusko County are over $400,000. They just won’t touch a home under that price. The largest production builders ... their base home is at $315,000, which if you do the math on that is just not affordable.”
Schlatter said he’d like to get his homes on the two smaller lots in under $200,000 each. Board President Tammy Dalton said that area was not going to support much more than that. The homes will each be one bedroom, one bathroom.
“Really targeting single-member households,” he stated. “In our community here, about a quarter, a little over a quarter of our population, lives individually. There’s a lot of people. And living individually, you don’t need a big house, and yet we’re not providing smaller homes that are affordable to those types of individuals.”
Huffer asked if the intent then was to sell each of the units as separate homes. Schlatter said the back one probably will be sold as an individual house, but the front one is two homes on one property so it would need to sell as one property. Schlatter said the front one could be a situation where a person lives in one but rents out the other.
Huffer said the property doesn’t have frontage on any street. However, Reust later pointed out that the property abuts Jefferson Street where Jefferson is unimproved. Keeven asked if Jefferson couldn’t be improved to over there.
City Planner Justin Taylor said, “This is exactly why this is in front of the board, because it’s a unique situation. You guys see unique situations all the time. If you are curious about seeing something like this in other parts of the city, go to Taylor Street and Poppy Street and drive down those two roads and see how they work. They’re actually glorified alleyways that are named as streets. We’ve got a couple other instances around the city where these things have occurred and they’ve been developed. And BZA is the place where these exceptions can sometimes come.”
He said it was likely the city would not commit the resources to extend that stretch of Jefferson Street just for the benefit of one development. “If there was a larger structure going in, that would be considered part of that development, that might be considered, but to build out that whole stretch of Jefferson for the benefit of one property owner would likely not happen. They’ve come up with a solution that would be functionable and accessible for those lots,” he said.
Continuing, Taylor explained, “Also, these developments, with these smaller lot sizes that represent a mix of different lot sizes, are what we try to accomplish with planning. So the last five planned unit developments that have come through the city have been approved by the plan commission and the city council, have had a mix of different-sized lots and different-sized units. It is an ideal situation with a park next to it. So I just want to say this development, the way it’s been laid out, is in alignment with what the city has been pushing for in the last five years.”
Keeven eventually made the motion to approve the variance requestion, and Tucker seconded the motion. It passed 4-1 with Huffer opposed.
In a new petition before the BZA Monday, Gabe Douglas, Model 1 Ford, petitioned for a variance from development standards to allow a 36-foot tall sign in a Commercial-3 zone at 436 W. CR 250N, Warsaw.
The current sign is being relocated from the lot owned by the Toyota dealership to Model 1’s property. At one time, both properties were under the same ownership, but that is no longer the case. Per city code, a 36-foot tall sign is not permitted and the legal nonconforming sign must meet code if being significantly modified or moved. An off-premise sign also is not permitted, and this sign would no longer be an off-premise sign if moved.
Since the petitioner is working toward moving the sign on to their property, the Warsaw Planning Department recommended the variance be approved.
Douglas told the board the Rice family owned the Ford and Toyota dealerships. They separated the lots when they built the Toyota dealership, but the Ford sign ended up on the Toyota lot. When the Rices sold to Model 1 Ford, the sign was left on the Toyota property and had to be moved to the Model 1 Ford property.
The petition was unanimously approved.