BZA narrowly approves Smoot variance allowing reduced side-yard setbacks for proposed retirement home

Lancaster County—s Board of Zoning Appeals approved, by a 3-2 vote recorded at the hearing, a variance requested by William and Teresa Smoot to allow a primary one-story dwelling with attached garages to sit 15 feet from the easterly and westerly property lines on a Bighorn Trail / Queenstown Road parcel that the applicants intend as their retirement home.

Applicant William Smoot told the board he and his wife want a single-story home with two attached two-car garages and a central courtyard; he said many of the house plans they are considering are 65 to 70 feet wide and that the lot—s existing building envelope (about 69.5 feet wide, per the staff survey) would be inadequate once attached garages are included. "We didn't want our house designer to go full bore until we knew about how much waste we were gonna have to work with," Smoot said, adding that a soil scientist and the builder recommended placing the primary drain field on the site and reserving a remote drain field area as backup.

Opposition came from an adjacent property owner, Paul Stefanstein, who spoke on the phone and said he and his wife Tiffany Burkett "oppose the variance." Stefanstein argued the lot is a normal-shaped unimproved parcel and that the proposed footprint "is counter to everything else" in the Baypoint community; he suggested the owners could rotate a plan 90 degrees or choose a different layout that would fit the existing envelope. Another speaker raised the existence of an existing shed at a neighbor—s property near the line, noting accessory structures can be placed closer than principal buildings under the ordinance.

Planning staff told the board the parcel is a pre-Bay Act lot created near the 1975 zoning ordinance and that the 100-foot waterfront buffer was not considered when the lot was platted; staff noted the lot is roughly 0.8 acres and the building width is constrained. The applicants told the board they prefer attached garages to detached garages located five feet from property lines, which they said would be visually inferior.

Board members debated the three statutory variance criteria. One member said he did not see the required hardship for approving the variance, while another said the pre-existing lot creation and the drain-field constraints gave weight to a finding that the ordinance unreasonably restricted the use of the property. After discussion a motion to approve carried by a 3-2 vote.

Why it matters: The decision allows a single-story retirement design with attached garages on a pre-zoning-era lot; opponents argued the same program could be achieved without a variance and raised concerns about consistency with neighborhood scale.

The transcript records the 3-2 result but does not provide a numeric roll-call naming individual board members in the excerpt provided.