07-08-2002 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

a 1875 Hardcover Variance We are again applying for a variance so that we can build a deck off of our house at 1875 Shadywood Road. We currently ha\e no deck. Our last variance application, which we applied for in the fall of 2000 when we were about to begin building our home, was denied at the Planning Commission level. We withdrew our application at that time, at the suggestion of the Planning Commission. As a side note, one of the reasons we withdrew our application - aside from the fact that it seemed to be a losing battle • was that a member of the commission suggested that we could receive a partial refund, which we never received. •• Our new' plans for a deck stay beyond the 75-foot setback, which was the issue in our first variance application. At issue now is the 25'Jo hardcover pjIc for the 75 to 250 area. We thought we were under the 25^o requirement, but as it turns out we are at 29%. The additional hardcover comes in two main areas: our retaining walls (which we didn't realize cr'unted as hardcover) and our driveway. The proposed deck, which is less than 1 50 square feet hardcover, would be acceptable if we did not have so much hardcover tied up in our driveway and retaining walls. Our driveway may seem large, and it is admittedly larger than what was on our original plan, but it has been this large throughout the entire building of our home, so we weren’t hiding anything from the city, and we feel strongly that it needs to be this size for our safety as well as the safety of our visitors. When we originally applied for the driveway. Dale Zetterstrom came out to review the site. He was concerned that w e have room for a turnaround of some sort so that we wouldn’t have to back out onto County Road 19, which is an increasingly busy road. As such, and also due to our experience with living in this area for 6 years, we designed our garage to be a side-entry garage, leaving plenty of room for us to turnaround in our driveway. Another concern with the driveway was the number of visitors we have. As there is a no-parking rule on 19, there is no place for our gusts for park, and a regular driveway does not have adequate space. We lived previously at 1855 Shady'wood Road, which IS right next door. We had what I would describe as a “standard” drivew'ay. It was difficult, especially in the winter with the snowdriRs, to back out, and some of our guests received tickets for parking on the side of the road. We both come from rather large families (6 and 5 children respectively, most of whom live in the Twin Cities) so large gatherings is a fact of life. In addition to parking concerns for our guests, my husband works in construction and often drives a truck with a large trailer attached. Without our current driveway, we simply would have no place to park the truck when the trailer is attached. The retaining walls, most of which were not on our original plan, were added because we needed them, not because we wanted them. We needed to hav e a retaining wall for our drivew-ay, and we made it two-tiered so we could have a level of plants in it and also so #2796 1