The Red Oak Zoning Board of Adjustments on Aug. 14 held a public hearing on a request by property owner Gene Bond to allow multiple variances for 105 South Main Street, a building Bond described as a 1969 Red Oak State Bank that predates the city’s zoning rules.

Bond said the building’s age and footprint create a hardship under current C‑1 Commercial District development standards and asked the board to approve reductions to front and rear setbacks, lot width and depth, parking and landscaping requirements and to allow increased lot coverage. “We’re here to decide, do I have a hardship for this? And the answer is yes. I do,” Bond said.

The planning staff presentation, given by Roderick Palmer, the city’s planning and zoning manager, explained that the property currently lacks legal on‑site parking as defined by the ordinance and that the parcel contains a large area of concrete outside the applicant’s property line. “It doesn’t meet the parking requirements… we’re not calculating any legal parking spaces for the particular property,” Palmer said. Staff also noted the building was constructed before adoption of the current zoning ordinance, which is why the owner is seeking variances.

Board members and applicants discussed practical remedies and downtown policy. Members raised options that included diagonal parking on Main Street, shared or reconfigured on‑street parking and whether city council should adopt a broader downtown vision so individual variance requests would not be handled piecemeal. One board member noted that bringing the building into full conformity likely would require removing a significant portion of the structure.

Bond told the board he has installed planter boxes and restriped faded parking lines to improve the site’s appearance and said he has prospects to lease the building if variances are granted. He also cited nearby projects that received variances and said prior approvals had helped revitalize downtown.

The board closed the public hearing. A motion to approve the case (filed in the meeting as ZBA25‑02) was made and recorded in the transcript, and votes were cast; however, the transcript contains conflicting or unclear statements about the final tally (participants in the record refer to multiple nays and yays and to confusion over roll calls). The transcript does not clearly record a definitive final vote count or the board’s formal disposition of ZBA25‑02.

Because the meeting record does not contain an unambiguous roll call result for this item, it is not possible to state from the transcript whether the variance request for 105 South Main was approved or denied.

Board discussion and public comments emphasized two recurring themes: (1) the practical difficulty of meeting modern parking and landscaping standards on historic, pre‑ordinance lots; and (2) a desire among several members and downtown stakeholders for a coordinated council‑level plan for downtown parking and streetscape that would reduce repetitive variance requests.

If the board or city publishes an amended or official minute with a clear vote record, that document should be consulted for final disposition of ZBA25‑02. For now the transcript shows the public hearing, staff and applicant presentations, and the motion to consider the variances, but does not contain an unequivocal final vote tally or formal statement of outcome.