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Board of Adjustments opens deliberation on variance to allow four driveways onto collector street in David Estates
Summary
The Board of Adjustments held a public hearing and moved to deliberation on a variance request from MPM Development LP to allow four residential driveways onto a collector street at David Estates Unit 7; city staff and consultant engineers recommended denial, and no final vote on the variance was recorded at the meeting.
The Board of Adjustments held a public hearing and opened deliberation on a request from MPM Development LP to allow four residential driveways onto a collector street at Lot 39, Block 17 of David Estates Unit 7, addressed as 2201 Artemis Drive.
City staff recommended denial of the variance to Unified Development Ordinance section 607(d), citing public-safety concerns, impaired sight lines, conflicts with the UDO’s intent for collector streets and concurrence from the city’s consulting planner and a separate professional engineer. "Therefore, staff recommends denial of the proposed variance request," said a city planner during the public-hearing presentation.
The applicant, Moses Mastegasse, representing MPM Development LP, said the lot’s unusual shape and size limit reasonable design options. "That corner lot is right now 26,000 square feet," Mastegasse said, adding that surrounding lots are typically 5,000 to 7,000 square feet and that leaving the parcel a single oversized lot would be undesirable. He also said the intersection adjacent to the proposed lots is controlled by a four-way stop and contended that traffic speeds approaching the stop would not create the high-speed conflict the city staff described.
Staff told the board the approved preliminary plat for David Estates Unit 7 was authorized in 2019 and that the final plat for Unit 7 had not yet been submitted for review. Staff and its consultants described Persephone Drive (the secondary collector in question) as having a design speed of 45 mph and Artemis Drive as a 30 mph local street; the staff report noted that driveways onto a collector increase conflict points and can compromise the operation efficiency of the street.
The staff presentation referenced the applicant’s responses to required variance criteria and included three-tiered criteria review documents and professional opinions from Fries and Nichols (planning consultant) and LJA (engineer). Staff advised the board that the Unified Development Ordinance provides alternatives to direct driveway access onto a collector and that those alternatives were included in the packet.
During the meeting, the board opened the deliberation phase and was invited to make the required findings under the three-step variance deliberation procedure: (1) that at least one of four prescribed circumstances applies; (2) that none of nine specific adverse effects would be created; and (3) that the request affirmatively meets six additional criteria. The chair noted that a motion must be seconded and receive at least four affirmative votes to proceed through the remaining steps. No motion to affirm the criteria or to approve the variance was recorded before the meeting segment concluded.
The board did approve minutes from its Nov. 6, 2024, workshop and meeting earlier in the session. The public-hearing portion of the variance item concluded before deliberation; the board moved into deliberation but had not completed a final vote on the variance during the recorded portion of the meeting.
The variance remains under consideration pending any future motion, final vote, or submission of a final plat for David Estates Unit 7.
