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Item No: 5A Meeting Date: June 19, 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 a Variance to allow a 30.5-foot Front Setback at 7313 Spring Lake Road; Planning Case VR2013-003 Introduction: The applicant, Ron Santanni, with Santanni Custom Homes, one of the property owners of 7313 Spring Lake Road is requesting a variance to allow a new house to have a 30.5-foot front setback, which is 6.5 feet less than the prevailing setback on the block. The City Code requires a minimum 30-foot, or the prevailing setback on the block for new homes, without a variance. Discussion: 7313 Spring Lake Road is a vacant lot on the northeast corner of Spring Lake Road and County Road H2. The applicant is part of an investment group that recently purchased the property and he plans to build a new home. This lot was originally combined with the property to the north, but the parcel was subdivided in 2011 creating two lots, one with the existing house and this vacant lot. At the time of the subdivision, it was discussed that the prevailing front setbacks on both Spring Lake Road and County Road H2 were larger and would make it more difficult to place a house and meet all the setbacks on this new vacant lot. The parcel is 0.40 acres (162’ wide x 107’ deep), but since it is a corner lot, it has two front yards. New homes must meet the front setbacks for both streets, along with the rear setback. The City Code requires that front setbacks be a minimum of 30 feet or what the prevailing setback is on the block, and rear setbacks are a minimum of 30 feet. The proposed house cannot meet both the front prevailing setback of 37 feet and the code required 30 foot rear setback. The house is placed facing Spring Lake Road since it has much less traffic than County Road H2, and is planned to have a front setback of 30.5 feet and a rear setback of 30.6 feet. The Zoning Code states that the Planning Commission may issue a variance to provide relief to the landowner in those cases where the Code imposes practical difficulties to the property owner in the use of the property owner’s land. This is true for all variance requests. State statutes require that the governing body review a set of specified criteria for each application and make its decision in accordance with these criteria. These criteria are set forth in Section 1125.02, Subdivision 2, of the City Code. A variance may be granted only in the event that all of the following circumstances exist: