The Greensboro Board of Adjustment had a tough call at it’s meeting this week.
In fact the board had a tough time meeting at all.
The June meeting was cancelled and the July meeting delayed for a week to Monday, July 29, reportedly because they didn’t have enough members available to hold a meeting in June or on Monday, July 22.
The July meeting seems to prove the old adage – It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. The case was more complicated than most from the beginning. Ada Castro of 602 Meadowood St. was requested two variances for an accessory building which had already been built. The building encroached two feet into the required 10 foot rear setback and 3.5 feet into the required 10 foot setback from other buildings on the lot.
It’s doubtful if the Board of Adjustment would have granted the two variances to build the building, but board members balked at the idea of forcing Castro to demolish the building and voted unanimously in favor of granting the variances.
Castro at first said the building would be used for storage. But when questioned by board members why she needed plumbing in a storage building, Castro said that it was also going to serve as a pool house, for the pool that she planned to build.
Two neighbors objected to the requested variance and said that with windows and porches, the two story structure looked like a house not like a storage building.
After the board members discovered from an aerial photo that the building had air-conditioning, Chair of the Board of Adjustment, Chuck Truby, said, “If there’s air-conditioning it seems to me this thing is being set up as a dang dwelling unit.”
It appeared that the board was going to deny the variances, but the idea of forcing Castro to tear down an existing structure, trumped the fear by board members that the building would be used as an accessory dwelling unit, not a storage building and perhaps one day a pool house.
After the vote Truby told the neighbors that if they saw any evidence that people were living in the building they should notify the city because that would be a violation of the zoning ordinance.
