February 15, 2007

By Lauren Heaton

At their meeting on Monday, Village Planning Commission members approved with conditions a proposal by Home, Inc. to move its office to 1227 Xenia Avenue and to add a small apartment to one of two buildings on the lot. The proposal will now be sent to the Village Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), which meets on March 21, for a variance to irregular zoning parameters on the property.

Last month Home, Inc. brought to plan board the first proposal for conditional use approval in order to add three dwelling units and an office space to the .24-acre Xenia Avenue lot with an existing house and out building. In response to concerns expressed by neighbors and plan board members, Home, Inc. revised its plan by eliminating a two-unit apartment building, adding more parking and a stormwater drainage area and focusing strictly on remodeling the main house and the second structure for office and storage space and a single apartment upstairs.

Plan board approved Home, Inc.’s revised plan with five conditions to make the property conform to the standards of residence B zoning. The conditions include adding a total of eight parking spaces to the property, obtaining official safety approval from the fire department, adding a four-foot wood fence along the property line for screening, maintaining no more than the current stormwater runoff and obtaining approval from the BZA for other nonconforming code variances.

Plan board members John Struewing, Tim Tobey, Bill Bebko and Matt Reed voted to approve the proposal with conditions, and plan board president Bruce Rickenbach voted to deny the proposal.

During a public hearing on the proposal at Monday’s meeting, two neighbors spoke in opposition to the plan. Virgil Hervey, who lives adjacent to the Home, Inc. property, opposed the proposal based on previously stated concerns that the plan was too dense for the area and would add to the already existing stormwater drainage problems. Shelley Wing, who lives on Shawnee Drive, objected because of what she sees as an already congested traffic area with inadequate parking space for a business. Plan board also received a total of six letters from neighbors who opposed the plan for reasons mentioned above.

Home, Inc.’s plan must receive a variance from the BZA for several nonconforming issues, including a previously existing inadequate front yard setback for the main house, inadequate side yard setback, and also inadequate minimum lot area for the two dwelling units. The BZA must also approve a special exception for the nonconforming use of an office space in a residential district.

In other plan board business:
• Plan board members agreed on a request to the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission to increase the size of Yellow Springs’ facilities planning area (FPA), or the area over which the Village, a designated management agency, will have input over sanitary sewer and wastewater management planning.

The current FPA includes an area about five times the size of the village located mostly inside Miami Township, but spilling over into Greene and Xenia Townships. Partly based on recommendations from Village contractor John Eastman, of LJB Engineering, plan board members agreed to add to the west side of the FPA the entire Jacoby Creek watershed on the west side of Miami Township and also the watershed for the Little Miami River at the south end of the village along Clifton Road between Grinnell and Jacoby roads. These areas were designated as land that was expected to maintain an unsewered status for the foreseeable future.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com