Three homeowners are asking The Colony's Board of Adjustment to let them keep or build carports and a garage that the city's accessory-structure rules do not allow, and planning staff recommend that the board turn down all three.
The board takes up the special exception requests at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, at City Hall, 6053 Main St. In each case, staff reports in the meeting packet conclude that the owners have not shown a hardship tied to the property that is not of their own making, the test the city's code sets for approval.
Two carports already standing on South Colony Boulevard
The largest request involves a home on South Colony Boulevard where two carports are already up. According to the staff report, the case began after the owners received notices of violation and a stop-work order for building a carport without the required permits and review fees. As of the packet's printing, no building permits had been applied for.
The owners are seeking four exceptions. With the carports, structures would cover about 62% of the roughly 60-by-115-foot lot, compared with a 40% limit in the single-family district, and the carports cover about 80% of the back yard. The east carport measures about 47 by 32 feet and the west one about 26 by 22 feet, both over the 24-foot maximum length for a carport.
Both reach into the side yards, where carports are not allowed, coming within about 2.2 and 3.3 feet of the property lines, and both appear to sit closer than 3 feet to the house, which the code allows only for permitted carports not used for storage. The owners' narrative says the carports hold business supplies.
Staff wrote that a structure covering 62% of a lot could not meet the runoff standard in the city's engineering design manual for single-family homes, which raises a drainage concern.
In a narrative filed with the request, the owners describe the carports as galvanized steel screened from the neighbors by a wood privacy fence, say they are working with city staff toward full compliance and submitted letters of support.
The report says the neighboring owner to the west supports the request, and the tenant next door to the east does too, though that property's owner has not weighed in.
