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Item No: 5A Meeting Date: June 18, 2008 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 Request to allow for a one foot driveway setback at 5352 & 5354 Raymond Avenue; Planning Case VR2008-003 Introduction: The applicant, Bob Yentsch, representing property owner, Michael Kinyon, is requesting a variance to permit the new driveways at his side-by-side duplex to have a one foot setback from the north and south property lines. The property owner is adding attached garages to this duplex, one on each end of the building, along with new driveways to replace the existing gravel. The lot is 100 feet wide so they are only able to build single car garages, but they would like to make the driveways wide enough for two cars to fit next to each other. Many of their tenants have more than one vehicle, and with the current narrow driveways, they either park or drive off the driveway, or they have to move cars around when someone is leaving. Since there is no overnight parking on the streets in Mounds View, all vehicles must be in the driveways. The east side of Raymond Avenue is entirely side-by-side duplexes on identical 100 foot wide lots which causes issues when owners want to add additional space or more than a one car wide driveway to these properties. The applicant owns several of the duplexes on Raymond Avenue and he received another variance in 1995 for a reduced driveway setback when he added garages to another duplexes on this block, and another duplex owner on this block received a reduced setback variance in order to add living space closer than 10 feet to the property line. Due to the lot being rather narrow for a duplex, the applicant is requesting to place the driveways one foot from the north and south property lines. City Code requires that all driveways be at least five feet from the property line without a variance. Discussion: As with any variance application, for the Planning Commission to act favorably, there must be a demonstrated hardship or 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 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. The Code clearly states that a hardship exists when all of the criteria are met. The individual criteria, with responses, are as follows: a. Exceptional or extraordinary circumstances apply to the property which do not apply generally to other properties in the same zone or vicinity and result from lot size or shape, topography or other circumstances over which the owners of the property since the effective date hereof have had no control.