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SYRACUSE - Several businesses will be sharing parking spaces at 500 W. Chicago St., Syracuse, so J&B Real Estate petitioned the Syracuse Board of Zoning Appeals Thursday for a variance to allow that.
The BZA unanimously approved the variance, allowing parking and multiple uses on the three tracts of ground including Rinker Race Boats, R&R Fitness, and a tract housing and storage units. Conditions placed on the approval include no outside storage or staging of boating on the parking spaces, and the race boat building must still meet all the conditions previously placed on it. The property is on the north side of Chicago Street and 100 feet east of Syracuse-Webster Road, Syracuse.
Attorney Steve Snyder, representing J&B Real Estate and Rinker Boat Co., the tenant for the tracts, said they looked at the available space and how much they could get to come up with the plans presented before the BZA. When the parking spaces are completed and all the necessary work is finished for the property, it will be totally reshaped to have as much parking as possible. He said they will at least double the amount of parking they have.
As for the surface water runoff generated by the parking spaces, Snyder said the engineers for the project are going to add four new catch basins to the property and the parking lot will be tapered so all the water runs off into those basins. Eventually, all the water runoff will run into the nearby ditch.
"We don't want to create any more surface water runoff than is necessary," he said.
There will be two entrances and two exits for the tracts, all off onto Chicago Street.
BZA chairman Mike Brower said the plans presented were probably a good solution for the businesses' parking for now and in the future.
There were no remonstrators to the petition.
In other business, Kosciusko County Assistant Planner Matt Sandy presented the board with a 2002 Syracuse BZA year-end report.
In 2002, the BZA approved 11 variances, denied none and dropped one. There were five exceptions granted, none denied and one dropped for a total of six. Thirty-seven permits were issued for a total cost of construction of $2,023,835.
"Overall, permits were up countywide," said Sandy.
He then presented to the BZA an ordinance amending the Kosciusko County Zoning Ordinance that is to go before the Kosciusko County Commissioners for approval Jan. 28.
The amendment states that lots that abut unimproved alleys, pedestrian easements, utility easements, drainage easements and unimproved "stub" rights of way - which are not the primary front or rear and that terminate at a water's edge and that don't pose a public health or safety threat - the ordinance administrator may reduce the setback requirement to 5 feet. That reduction will be approved if the affected landowners have granted written consent. Affected landowners are adjoining property owners on both sides of the unimproved alleys, pedestrian easements, utility easements, drainage easements and unimproved "stub" rights of way.
Sandy said of the ordinance, "The commissioners actually want to see it" and thought it was a good compromise instead of property owners seeking to vacate such thoroughfares.
The BZA also approved Mike Brower to remain as BZA chairman and Jon Brookmyer as vice chairman.
Members of the Syracuse BZA present Thursday were Mike Brower, Jon Brookmyer, Steve Sharp and Larry Siegel with board member Gus Duehmig not present. The BZA meets at 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of every month in the town hall.
