| |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The head of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum has asked the Athens Board of Zoning Appeals to review a recent ruling by the city's Planning Commission.
On Jan. 11, the commission gave the go-ahead to plans by a local developer to knock down an existing Stimson Avenue business and replace it with a small apartment building, a decision that has triggered some opposition in the community.
Ron Luce, director of the historical society, has been very active in opposing the apartment project, partly because the building slated for destruction, which now houses the BellaVino beer-and-wine shop, is more than a century old.
It was originally a stable housing pack animals for a nearby brickworks, but has undergone renovations and additions over the years. It has served as an alcohol outlet at least since the '60s.
In trying to block the plans of developer Ric Wasserman, however, Luce has not mainly invoked the building's alleged historic significance, which does not provide it any legal protection from being razed.
Instead, Luce has concentrated primarily on what he claims was a serious misreading of the Athens zoning code by the three members of the Planning Commission who approved Wasserman's plan. They overruled the objections of the mayor and service-safety director, who both voted no.
In a letter to the zoning board dated last Thursday, Luce asked to be allowed to file an appeal of the Planning Commission's Jan. 11 ruling. That decision granted Wasserman permission to proceed with his plans to raze the BellaVino building and construct an 18-bed apartment building aimed at Ohio University students.
Luce's legal argument is multi-faceted, but his central claim is that the city's zoning code does not allow Wasserman to use the ground floor of the apartment building as a parking garage for his tenants.
The site is located in a B-3 general business zone, in which residential use is permitted only on the second floor and above; the ground floor is required to be some type of commercial use.
Wasserman has argued forcefully that his parking spaces do qualify as a commercial use, and that previous Planning Commission rulings have supported this view.
Luce claims that the board's ruling represents a massive distortion of what the code actually says; unless Wasserman offers paid parking to the general public, he maintains, his ground-floor parking garage isn't a "commercial use" acceptable for a B-3 zone.
The Planning Commission recently got a new member, former Athens City Council member Nancy Bain, replacing Harry Kaneshige, one of the three members who voted to approve Wasserman's application.
Bain has said that if she, instead of Kaneshige, had been on the board for the vote, it would have been 3-2 against Wasserman, not in his favor.
"I would say definitely," Bain confirmed Sunday.
However, she added, she does not believe the commission, with its new membership, can now revisit the issue and vote differently.
"I'm sorry to say, but I think it's done," she said.
Had she been on the board at the time of the vote, Bain said, she probably would have forwarded the case to the Athens Board of Zoning Appeals for a ruling on a variance for the first-floor parking issue.
Luce had earlier sent a letter to Athens Law Director Pat Lang, hinting that if the Planning Commission ruling stands, the city may face a lawsuit.
Lang has said in a response letter that he believes the commission's ruling is legally defensible.
This is despite the fact that the commission's vote contradicted a legal opinion from Lang's office, in which he suggested that a parking lot for tenants of an apartment building does not qualify as a valid first-floor commercial use on Stimson Avenue.
The pending sale and destruction of BellaVino has triggered a raging debate on The Athens NEWS website (www.athensnews.com) and Facebook page, with BellaVino owner Lili Chandler Glover defending her decision to sell, and various local residents attacking her for doing so, or rallying to her defense.
She has an op-ed explaining her position in The NEWS' opinion pages today.
