Historical Society chief not giving up on crusade to save building

Though he's been kept off the agenda of Tuesday night's meeting of the Athens Board of Zoning Appeals, the director of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum still plans to show up and urge city officials to block the destruction of a Stimson Avenue building that's over a century old.

According to Ron Luce, Athens Code Director John Paszke and Law Director Pat Lang "have both made it real clear that they're going to throw every roadblock in the path of (my efforts) that they can."

Lang declined last week to comment on Luce's allegation, noting that his official view on the issue is included in a legal opinion issued in response to Luce's request to be able to argue an appeal with the zoning board Tuesday.

Luce has asked to appeal a January ruling by the Athens Planning Commission, which gave a green light to plans to raze an existing retail building on Stimson and replace it with student apartments.

In Lang's legal opinion in response, the law director maintained that if Luce wants to fight the commission's decision, the proper legal channel is for Luce to file an administrative appeal with the Athens County Common Pleas Court.

Ohio law, Lang wrote, is "crystal clear about the remedy available to someone wishing to appeal a decision of the Planning Commission." Because the law clearly lays out the correct appeal procedure, he added, "it would be inappropriate" for the zoning board to hear Luce's proposed appeal of the commission's ruling.

Luce has been fighting plans to raze the building at 22 W. Stimson, now home to the BellaVino beer-and-wine store, since local developer Ric Wasserman announced his intentions late last year.

Though the building is not on any state or federal list of historically significant sites, local historians say it is a last vestige of the city's brick-making industry, which flourished briefly around the turn of 19^th century. The building, which was reportedly once a stable housing pack animals for a nearby brickworks, has been renovated and added on to since it was first constructed. It has housed beer and wine carry-outs for decades under different ownerships and management.

Luce, of the Historical Society, has been waging a campaign to try to block Wasserman's plans to tear down the building, and replace it with an 18-bed apartment building aimed at the Ohio University student market.

With no legal protection available for the site based on its alleged historical significance, Luce has focused on what he calls a blatant violation of the Athens zoning code that allowed the project to move forward.

Last month, the Planning Commission gave a green light for Wasserman to proceed, in a 3-2 split vote which saw the three citizen members of the board voting to approve, and the two city officials on the board – Mayor Paul Wiehl and Service/Safety Director Paula Horan Moseley – voting no.

The major sticking point for Wiehl and Moseley seems to have been the issue of parking on the ground floor of the proposed building. City code says that in a B-3 general business zone such as Stimson Avenue, residential uses are allowed only on the second floor and above; the ground floor must be a commercial use.

Wasserman argues that a parking lot for tenants on the ground floor qualifies as such a commercial use. The city law director's office gave the zoning board a legal opinion which said the parking lot did not meet the code requirements for a first-floor commercial use, but the board approved the project anyway.

In an email to the zoning board members Saturday, Luce alleged that Paszke "would like to let the Wasserman project slip through the cracks of code," without having the city properly clarify the first-floor parking issue in a B-3 zone.

"As far as I am concerned, there was no legitimate reading of the code which would allow parking spaces to somehow become businesses, and therefore qualify the apartment complex to fit minimal requirements for a B-3 zone," Luce wrote.

Luce admitted last week that though he's been consulting an attorney, he's reluctant to take his case to Athens County Common Pleas Court, because of the expense this would entail. However, he said, he believes he shouldn't have to sue – the zoning board should be able to review, and possibly overturn, the Planning Commission's vote.

"I'm not going to give up on this until the last possible second," he vowed.

The zoning board does allow a period during its meetings for public comment, and Luce plans to make his pitch for saving the BellaVino building then.

Records of the county Auditor's Office indicate that Wasserman's company had not yet, as of Friday, closed on a deal to purchase the BellaVino site from its current owner, Wilimay LLC.