chair and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the RSA 5
residential single-family zoning at this location the city rezoned this neighborhood in 1982
and a council supported map change this is a primarily single-family block face there is no
unique physical condition or circumstance of the property that would prevent it from being used in
strict conformity with the zoning code the city planning commission recommends the board deny the
requested use variants for two dwelling units.
Okay, thank you. MI2024006072518 East Thelma Street, I vote yes with Proviso Interior Trash Storage.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes with Proviso.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with Proviso.
I'm sorry. I got requests for no household living in a basement as well.
so i'll do that over again um if i two zero two four zero zero six oh seven two five eighteen
east thelma street my vote is yes with provisos interiors trash storage and no household living
in the basement michael johns my vote is yes with provisos cheryl gaston my booty chefs with
provisos i am mcadams my vote is yes with provisos tywin my vote is yes with provides okay thank
you sir you had your votes good luck have a good day all right case number 12 um mi-2025-006170
810 south 10th street sharon wellin is the attorney
good morning board members good morning
good morning counsel can you state your name and spell it for the record
good morning counsel can you state your name and spell it for the record certainly
certainly sean whalen w-h-a-l-e-n um and do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothing but the truth yes i do can you identify your client and the relationship to
the property certainly the client is jason ball sitting next to me here on the left he is the
owner of the property okay all right and so uh we have uh a letter of non-agreement
from bella vista neighbors association um and this is a refusal for the
offense height of six feet zero inches and it proposes 10 feet right okay so our board secretary
Ms. Gadsden will ask your question.
Good morning, counsel.
Did you submit your documents and exhibits five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, we did.
And do you waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes, I do.
You can proceed with your case.
Thank you very much.
And just for clarity's sake, this is not just a regular fence.
It's a rolled up garage door that's sorry, garage door, a roll top door at the back of an existing parking space.
So it's installed already or it's it's not installed.
No, it's not installed yet, but it is purchased.
We're supposed to have permits from the contractor and contractor did not get the permits.
So we're here for those permits.
so again you can see right here basically at the corner of south 10th and catherine you have
where the green where the blue dot is 810 south 10th street what we're looking at you can see
this alleyway back here is essentially a dry a shared drive aisle for all the properties that
front on south warnock and south 10th street and here's really the condition that we're looking at
So you can see on the left-hand side here are all the cars that park in an open-air surface manner behind the houses on South Warnock Street.
And then 810 South 10th, you can see on the right with the red dot, it's just before everything gets completely covered by the large trees.
There is an approved existing parking space in the rear there.
and uh you know to put the cart before the horse the neighboring property uh has a condition
which exactly mirrors and identifies what we're seeking to do so i'll show you that
so we did receive one refusal uh there there's no new construction or change to the existing
structure whatsoever this only deals with uh the the rear existing it's actually a fence
not a wall not a fence um so we have that one refusal we have the engineered plans again they
show just the the roll top metal gate that's going to go back there at the end of the driveway
so here's a photo standing immediately in the alley looking from
basically where the roll top door would come down this is what my client is facing these are the
open-air surface parking spaces that you could see in Google Earth scrolling down
this is just if you turn to the right a little bit you can see numerous parking
spaces along that area and there's the the line here is the brick is sort of
the joint dry vile and the concrete is the parking spaces across the street so
here's essentially what we have this is the existing condition immediately in the red box
you can see the prior owner had put in a cinder block wall with a small wooden gate here however
there was approved parking for that my client has found it difficult to impossible to actually get
your car into that location without severely scratching his car which he's already done
and so he immediately looked next door and saw this red roll top door that is existing it was
approved by the board and that is essentially we're trying to match exactly that it ours will
be tan not red but it will match in height and essentially effect and again that's just a better
view of that roll top door so my client walked through the neighborhood these
are the adjoining kind of three blocks in every direction showing you know there
you know there are numerous numerous instances of these same types of doors throughout this
are numerous numerous instances of these same types of doors
neighborhood all on these kind of rear streets and rear alleys where people are parking
and it was interesting so my client actually had two meetings with bvna
they stated that they did not reach agreement on the application
However, if you scroll down to the vote count, the votes in favor were four to zero of the individuals who were actually there.
And then it was the RCO board, the BBNA board itself, that voted three to two in opposition.
So that's how they came to a position of basically no position, leaving it to this board.
um and so i'm happy to proceed and we would also accept a proviso i know this was a consideration
that bvna had that we will not exceed the height of the adjacent uh neighboring properties garage
door it's going to exactly match that same thing it's the same what was that height do you know
that it was measured this morning by mr ball at nine foot 11 inches so i would say 10 feet but
if we want to be specific we're happy to deal with that too okay and you can uh bring your
client on to adopt your testimony certainly uh oh actually you need to start your name
my name is jason ball first name is spelled j-a-s-o-n last name is spelled b as in boy a h-l
And do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Thank you very much.
Mr. Ball, you're here as the owner of the property, correct?
Correct.
And you submitted this application?
Did you hear all the testimony I already presented?
Do you believe it to be true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
And would you adopt that testimony as your own?
Thank you.
All right.
Um, so the, the RCO, uh, seemed to have issues, um, with visibility, like, you know, they wanted
more eyes on street and stuff. Um, that is, is that a concern of yours or like, do you understand,
you know, the issue with having the fence and the solid fence, um, along all of the quarter?
I, I did, um, and I did agree to explore it. Um, cause I, I didn't, you know, obviously they were
bringing it up at the meeting that wasn't in the plan so i did contact the company um that i had
gone through the process of purchasing a door already with and they basically at the bvna meeting
he was arguing to have the open more open area up above the level where the fence already was
and when i spoke to the door company they said that you couldn't really do that that if they
had a panel like that it would likely come down further anyways so really the the mesh area was
going to come down further than the original wall was and our other concern was when you look
from our property back to the neighbors the neighbors houses are actually up a little bit
so it sort of creates a situation where from their windows they could sort of look through that down
into our backyard which we it's not the ultimate end of the world our preference was just to have
a door as mr railing stated that just mimics the neighbors okay all right questions from the board
yeah i have a question but the can you go back to the previous photo
whose whose whose property is that at the pavement across from the your site
see this line here who's is this public property or is it shared whose whose property is that
The neighbors, each home has parking that they can park perpendicular out to that.
Okay, so that's their property?
This is shown as an easement alleyway in the city records.
The brick, correct?
the the brick and then actually going into i didn't measure it out but going into it's wider
than the brick um so i think it was the neighboring properties paved over a little farther than they're
allowed but nobody cared because it's a shared driveway for all of them okay so i guess because
my question and i'm asking this because there's no way that you can get in and out of that driveway
or your parking space without going on that concrete.
The brick is just not wide.
The brick is just not wide. The brick paving is just not wide enough. So you'd be, that's why I wanted to know sort of where the owner's properties end on across the street or behind you, because you need to go on that property in order to get into your, get into your driveway or whatever it is, your parking pad.
The brick paving is just not wide.
right so when i as mr whalen stated tried to come down the alleyway and basically what you would do
there is you would slide the wooden part across to the concrete part and i tried to pull we have
a mazda cx-5 very normal suv i tried to make a turn into there and basically scrape the door
on it so by having the wider expand similar to what the neighbor has that would allow me to make
more of a gradual turn in there rather than trying to very tightly make a very sharp left
turn into that parking space yeah i just don't see how you do it without going on the on the
concrete that's across from you so that's you know and i don't know that because we don't know where
their property ends it would seem to me that um it would but it would have been good to have
like some sort of support from the the folks that own those properties behind there
um because you're gonna you're gonna end up cracking the pavement like it's shown here
from from getting into your getting into your spot um yes so understood board member johnson
and with respect uh the all these houses who have parking spaces on the south 10th side
these are already approved parking spaces with the allowance to get there and the turning radius
already required by the streets department in order to get into and out they don't have fences
so right so like what we've got is the one side of the of the of the shared alley people are putting
up these fences and on one side of the shared alley they can't and the shared alley is what
is allowing everyone to be able to actually turn into the space at all so it's still creating an
uh an unequitable access issue right because some people aren't sharing their piece of their
property for the turning and then that one like the burden is falling on everybody on the other
side of the drive aisle so just to be clear that's not the case and i apologize if i confuse the
situation uh you explain how it's not all cars drive down on both the brick and the concrete
and then the houses that i'm showing right now they have every right to put up these same doors
if they wanted to what happened but then no one would be able to turn right they paved over too
far and so i get what you're saying but i also want you to know that if there was a fence
exactly across from this property that was 10 feet high neither of them would be able to easily turn
into their property if both were parked they'd likely have to back in but but you can't if
there's a fence there that's what i'm saying if there's a fence on the other side you don't have
the space to back in what gives the space right now is that there are no fences that is why so i
agree with the cinder block wall there that was difficult to do that is why i would like to have
basically that width that you see in the red box there because it does allow for i don't there's
nothing else sort of impeding it once that cinder block wall is gone so you can make a curve turn
in and not go over to the neighbors i'm i'm very cognizant of your roll-up gate is wider than your
neighbors it's going to be a little bit wider than your neighbors it may be i'm not sure if it's a
water than the neighbors but it would be that entire area it's that whole right that wooden
fence yeah okay all right so y'all confuse me a little bit so a car can go through the the brick
a car can fit on the the brick uh pay way or some of them you you do go down the brick pathway to
get there okay any any other questions from the board yes um i guess my question is about the
Is there no way to have something that is more open, like the fences on the other side are not close like this or not fully opaque?
um so i mean i understand that you can i i would think that even if you're talking about a roll
top tour like this that it could be more open maybe not up at the top like we're talking about
up at the top, like we're talking about, but more open so that it doesn't look as closed off. And I think I understand the concern of the RCO that you're going to have all these basically closed off spaces. You can't really see what's going on behind them and what have you. And I don't know whether it turns out to be a safety issue or not, but I mean, it just, yeah.
but more open so
yeah I think so with it I know that they do make doors that are fully um I call them a bash but
yeah more mesh yes um our our one concern which actually the RCO agreed with was we have a dog
and rather than sort of having the dog run up and barking at things that are going back and
forth through the alleyway you would have it essentially covered so that was why they had
made the recommendation along the top they they do obviously make doors that are are more mesh
throughout um i think the the other reason in my mind you know when you if you walk down the alley
way there's the as you saw the the rolling door on the one side on the other side it's a mix but
there there's a number of walls that are just cinder block walls that are seven to eight feet
tall with weeds growing up and over them i think i can pull that up yeah i i just felt like we
already had a situation where look we're we're neighborly people open the door you know speak to
the neighbors and things like that it wasn't that we you know wanted to wall ourselves off from the
neighbors which is kind of what some of those other cinder block walls do so that that was our
consideration around i mean we you know we we try to be flexible and good neighbors but that was our
all around it all right thank you okay questions from our attorney
not at this time madam chair uh questions from our audience
our virtual audience i see no hands at this time chair planning commission
thank you chair and good morning david fecto with the city planning commission chair and board
members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rm1 residential multi-family zoning
at this location the city rezoned this neighborhood in 1985 and a council supported map change the
proposed fence with a roll top door will not injure the use of adjacent property the city planning
commission recommends the board grant the proposed dimensional variance for a non-compliant fence
Thank you. MI-2025-006170, 810 South 10th Street, I vote yes.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes.
Maya McAdams, my vote is yes.
Maya Wynn, my vote is yes. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, number 11.
Thank you very much.
And I will apologize in advance. I can't be here. I'm just getting a continuance at 3.30. I'm in court at 1, so I'm not going to be able to be here.