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b <br />City of Orono - Variance Application <br />Description of Request: <br />•mni I ll‘ Vi.; / .)it ^ <br />ti n <br />C- -r. <br />iT^^SOi/ v.-cxi^ <br />! V <br />// <br />We recently became the parents of quadruplets (two boys, two girls, 7 months old), in <br />addition to our three year old son. Our house has enough bedrooms but does not have a <br />family room/kitchen, a space now much more imperative. We would like to add a family <br />room adjacent to the kitchen. Our proposal entails converting the present garage into the <br />family room and adding a new garage at the end of the driveway. We would also like to <br />replace a current deck on the back of the house. We want to minimize the addition of <br />building and deck because our actual yard space is small in comparison to the lot size (the <br />unusual hardship is described below). <br />Hardship/Description of Unusual Property Conditions: <br />We live at the end of a cul-de-sac. Our house is set on a pie shaped lot. The house is at <br />the tip of the lot (front facing west), close to the street. As the lot begins to spread out <br />past the house, the terrain drops dovMi. The house is situated such that the front entry is <br />level with the front yard and the back of the house basement is level with the backyard, so <br />that between the front and the back of the house, the land drops down 10 to 12 feet. The <br />back yard is level for between 25 to 40 feet from the house and then drops sharply down <br />about 30 feet. Our backyard is a strip of yard about 100 feet by 15 to 40 feet. The <br />backyard appears to be fill from the building of the house. Several contractors have told <br />us that it can be very expensive to build on fill and the building process entails the use of <br />pilings to support any structure built in the backyard. The north side of the lot appears to <br />have the most gradual decline and therefore, the most attractive building site. As for the <br />remaining portion of the lot, it is unusable for building because a large percentage of the <br />land is located at the bottom of the sharp drop-off. <br />The kitchen is located at the back of the house (the north east comer). The current garage <br />is located adjacent to the kitchen (north side of lot) and within 25 feet of the north side lot <br />line. The driveway runs parallel to the property line. Converting the current garage into <br />the family room and adding the new garage requires the new garage to approach the side <br />lot line within 5 feet.