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Item No: 5A Meeting Date: May 15, 2013 Type of Business: Public Hearing City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Mounds View Planning Commission From: Heidi Heller, Planning Associate Item Title/Subject: Consideration of Variance Request to allow for Reduced Side and Rear Yard Setbacks at 8385 Groveland Court; Planning Case VR2013-002 Introduction: The property owners, Richard and Laurol Boik, are requesting a variance to permit an addition to their house at 8385 Groveland Court to encroach two feet into the required 10- foot side yard setback and 4-inches into the existing 25-foot rear yard setback. The Boiks want to build a 16’ x 26’ addition with a covered porch, bedroom and bathroom on the side of their house for Laurol’s mother who has recently moved in. Discussion: The Boik’s house is a multi-level style built in 1978 in the Groveland Court cul-de-sac. The applicant’s lot is a cul-de-sac pie shape that is narrow at the street, but it is an odd six-sided lot that is only about 100 feet deep. When the house was under construction in 1978, the builder misunderstood the City Code and thought a minimum 35 foot front setback was required (30 feet is the minimum). This normally wouldn’t be a problem except that because it is a shallower lot, the house then had only a 25 foot rear setback (30 feet is the required minimum rear setback). Since the City did not require surveys for new homes at the time, this mistake wasn’t discovered until the footing inspection. Since the foundation was already in and the other homes in the cul-de-sac had 35 foot setbacks, the Planning Commission approved a variance for this property to have a 25-foot rear setback. The Boiks bought their house in 1997 and like the home and neighborhood, but Laurol’s mother can no longer live on her own now and recently moved in with the Boiks. The house has multi-levels and the bedrooms are on the upper-most level, so they want to add a bedroom, handicap accessible bathroom and a covered porch to the north end of the house for Mom. This would allow her access to the main areas of the house without having to deal with stairs. Based on the interior layout of the house, the north side is where the addition makes the most sense, and there is no room to expand the house to the rear. The house faces west and is centered on the lot. The garage is on the south end and the proposed addition would be on the north side, 16-feet wide and 26-feet deep (the same depth as the house). The adjacent north neighbor’s house is setback about 35 feet from the shared property line, so even with the Boik’s 16 foot wide addition, there would still be a lot of space between the houses. Because the side property lines angle outward, the addition would have an 8-foot setback at the front corner, but 3-feet back from the corner, the addition would meet the 10-foot setback. This variance request is also for a reduced rear setback. The existing house has a variance for the 25-foot rear setback, but the addition would be expanding on that setback, and would also extend slightly into where one of the rear property lines angles in giving the addition even less than a 25-foot setback.