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Item No: 6A Meeting Date: September 2, 2015 Type of Business: Public Hearing City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Mounds View Planning Commission From: Heidi Heller, Planning Associate Item Title/Subject: Public Hearing – Consideration of a Variance to Allow a Reduced Front Yard Setback for a Roof Extension at 5231 Irondale Road; Planning Case VR2015-007 Introduction: Jerome Buchanan, property owner of 5231 Irondale Road, has requested a variance to construct a roof extension off the front of his home to cover the front steps four feet closer to the street than the existing building. All of the homes fronting Irondale Road on this block are set back the same distance—30 feet from the property line. The variance requested is to encroach four feet into the front setback. Discussion: Setback requirements are addressed in Section 1104.01 of the Zoning Code. Each zoning district is listed with the corresponding front, side and rear setbacks. In an R-1, Single Family Residential district, the typical setbacks are as follows: Front, 30 feet; Side, 10 feet; and Rear, 30 feet. It is noted that sheds and garages, attached or detached, can have side and rear setbacks of 5 feet. The applicant wants to build a 12-foot wide by 4-feet deep roof to cover the front steps. A front stoop or deck is considered an allowable encroachment into a front setback, provided it does not extend above the height of the ground floor level of the principal structure. The steps extend four feet into the front yard. Awnings, eves and other roof extensions are also allowed as an encroachment, however they are limited to no more than a two-foot encroachment. Thus, the variance of an additional two feet is requested. Variance Considerations: For the City to approve this variance, as with any variance request, there needs to be demonstrated practical difficulty associated with the property that makes a literal interpretation of the Code overly burdensome or restrictive to a property owner. State statutes require that the governing body (the Planning Commission) review a set of specified criteria for each application and make its decision in accordance with these criteria. The City has set these criteria in Section 1125.02, Subdivision 2, of the City Code. The Code clearly states that a hardship exists when all of the criteria are met. The individual criteria and a staff comment about each are as follows: a. The variance is in harmony with the general purposes and intent of these regulations. The property at 5231 Irondale Road is a minimum size lot, and the applicant would like to add a 4-foot roof extension to cover the front entry for the purpose of protecting the doorway from weather and eliminating the water, and ultimately ice, that comes off the roof and builds up on the front steps. The property owner is limited, however, in that their home and the homes adjacent to them were constructed at the minimum 30-foot setback.