09-14-2020 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Thursday, August 24, 2020 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 5 of 13 Walsh said it’s certainly a unique piece of property and that is part of the challenge they are trying to grapple with, because even when they divide the land it doesn’t solve all the issues one normally wants to solve in a subdivision. He said especially with the weird configuration of the land and the width issues, some of that is going to suffer. Walsh stated it looks like the Applicant has come a long way and he recognizes what Johnson said regarding whether you can grab land across the water; whether that’s reality or not, he is not sure. Mr. Gamble said this is all one lot and he doesn’t know how they look at the land under the lagoon, it’s a contiguous lot through that lagoon and it isn’t grabbing land from somewhere else to make it work, it is taking the lot that is actually there. Walsh said it’s completely separate, and it would be like having a pond and you can’t get to the other land, noting it’s kind of like Fletcher’s, as they have the little island and you can’t get there unless you get on a boat and get to the island to get picked up. Mr. Gamble said he remembered the bridge they put in once and said he thinks they had to take it out as it blocked the waterway. Walsh said technically they could almost say the same thing, if it’s one parcel and one PID (Property Identification Number) and the property owner could say they own everything underneath the water and it’s connected so it’s a similar thing. He said when it’s completely displaced by water it’s hard to make that mental connection. Printup said between Togo Road and Northern Avenue they ran lots going through a wetland, rather than making the wetland an outlot, so the properties were a little bit smaller. Instead what happened is the properties went right through. He asked how you would get to the other side, he doesn’t know. However, the properties sold and he thinks they are being built on to this day, noting it’s a very strange setup down there. Walsh said the Applicant is very close to having it all work and then they wouldn’t even need to be here before the Council. He said he asks himself the question, knowing that this has a couple of things that don’t quite meet what a subdivision would be without having a variance, what is the reason he would say OK to this and he wouldn’t say OK to anything else. What is creating that practical difficulty that would say this is the exception to the rule because it’s so unique, for example to say the Applicant has gotten 95% done but just can’t get the last 5%. Walsh said he doesn’t know if he has that answer yet as this is so unique. Crosby stated he thinks the land on the other side of the water is something he could not get past. He thinks of his own lot and he is on a lagoon, but it would be like him trying to own a piece on the other side, it just doesn’t make sense. There is no land to get there. Johnson said even if they take the lagoon out and someone comes to the Council and says they have a non-conforming lot and they’d like to subdivide it, they would say no because they will not allow a further intensification of something that is already non-conforming. He said this is a terrific piece of real estate and they have exceptional privilege for hardcover, noting he saw the hardcover calculations for one but not the other. He said if they run the calculation for just the South part, they are over 25% hardcover for the amount of area they have there. Johnson stated that it comes down to the fact that it’s non-