Mayfield Heights City Council on May 28 confirmed a zoning-board variance that exempts a developer from a city landscaping requirement for the parking lot at 5901 Mayfield Road and approved a final site plan for new commercial construction on the property.

The variance was granted by the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) after the applicant said an existing easement requires the property to maintain a set number of parking spaces; adding the required landscaping would reduce the parking count below the easement requirement. The council voted to confirm the BZA action and separately approved the final site plan for redevelopment.

The developer’s representative, Ben Chinnacki, told council he is representing the property owners at 5901 Mayfield Road and described the redevelopment: “we intend to redevelop the CVS building with three tenants and also construct a 5,000‑square‑foot building in the parking lot,” and said the project team had obtained final approval from the planning commission and conditional approval from the board of architectural review subject to the variance. He also said the property owners and the city had been involved in litigation related to approvals for the site and that the lawsuit has made timing uncertain.

Law Director Schmidlin read the resolution confirming the BZA action and identified the applicants and agent as Tommy Chesney of Onyx Creative, agent for Stanley Schwartz, Ohio LLC and Bernard Schwartz, Ohio LLC. The resolution (2025‑25) confirms a BZA decision granting a landscaping variance for Cuyahoga County permanent parcel number 86109001. Council voted to suspend the rules and approve the resolution; roll‑call voting recorded “yes” from council members who participated in the roll call.

Council also approved Motion B, the final site plan for a new building on the CVS property. The motion described the new building as 5,500 square feet. (The applicant’s presentation earlier in the meeting referenced a 5,000‑square‑foot building; that discrepancy appears in the meeting record.)

During the BZA discussion, the building‑code issue was described in more detail: the property is subject to a parking‑lot easement dated February 2001 that mandates approximately 57 parking spaces; a subsequent municipal code amendment requires landscaping buffers that would cause the loss of about eight spaces. The BZA concluded that strict enforcement of the current ordinance would impose a practical difficulty on the owner and voted 3–0 to grant the variance.

Council members and staff noted the litigation and thanked the applicant for proceeding through the review process. Council did not set a construction start date; the developer told council the active lawsuit has made scheduling “quite difficult.”

The council packet included BZA minutes, planning commission minutes and the final plans; council members said the planning commission had given final approval and the board of architectural review had approved the design conditioned on receiving the landscaping variance.

The council’s approvals permit the project to move forward administratively; any building permits or construction timetable remain subject to resolution of the pending litigation and usual permitting processes.