Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Land Use Zoning topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Applicant argues decades of bar use justify variance; neighbors object and board defers decision
Summary
Attorney for Purple Rock LLC argued the 1,664-sq-ft building at 21104 Hampton Road is a longstanding nonconforming eating-and-drinking establishment and asked for a use variance to allow Bach Miller Enterprises to operate there; neighbors cited noise, parking, and sidewalk safety. The board closed the hearing and deferred a vote to the May meeting while legal questions about abandonment and title are reviewed.
Attorney Jim Bruno presented the applicant’s case for a use variance to allow an eating-and-drinking establishment at 21104 Hampton Road, a one-story, L-shaped building the attorney described as historically used as a tavern since at least 1974. Bruno told the board the structure measures about 1,664 square feet, occupies most of the lot, and includes a layout (bar, kitchen, two bathrooms, raised platform) that the applicant says cannot be reasonably converted to an R-1 residential use without demolition and new construction.
Bruno said the property’s liquor history is central to the request: the prior liquor license expired July 31, 2022, the health department noted operations ceased roughly July 12, 2023, and Bach Miller Enterprises holds PLCB license R‑8014 in safekeeping. He described an intermunicipal-transfer resolution the Erie City Council approved (April 1, 2026, Exhibit O) to permit a PLCB place‑to‑place transfer of a license from Mill Creek Township into the city, and argued that the property’s physical configuration and the cost to convert the building make the requested variance the minimum relief needed. “Granting the requested variance will not alter the essential character of the neighborhood,” Bruno told the board.
Multiple neighbors spoke in opposition. Freda Tupper, who said she lives nearby, asked that any investment trigger installation of sidewalks and said loud music and past nuisance behavior at the site were not sufficiently constrained by the applicant’s statements. “There should be a sidewalk,” Tupper said, and she warned that nothing in the variance application limited future entertainment to acoustic-only music. Jessica Carn, another neighbor, argued the site’s R-1 zoning exists to preserve a “quiet, safe, and stable environment” and said the claimed hardship was not adequately proven; she cited the zoning code’s abandonment provisions and disagreed with the applicant’s cost estimates for conversion to residential use. Wesley R. Barczinski recounted decades of neighborhood problems tied to previous bar operations and urged screening and fence replacement if the site reopens commercially.
The city solicitor (speaking in the hearing record but not identified by name) explained the council’s April resolution is one step toward permitting an intermunicipal liquor-license transfer but does not resolve a separate zoning question: whether the subject property’s prior commercial use had been “abandoned” under the ordinance’s two‑year rule. The solicitor flagged ambiguity in the ordinance’s abandonment definition and said that question and other title and procedural issues should be addressed by the board’s learned counsel before a final decision.
After receiving written opposition and public testimony, the board took a brief executive session. On return, staff noted two emailed oppositions and the board closed the hearing for the day, scheduling a vote at its next meeting in May to allow time for due diligence on the abandonment issue, title history, and any outstanding permit or code questions. No variance was granted at this hearing.
The zoning matter will return to the board for decision; the record includes multiple exhibits (parcel maps, deeds, PLCB documentation) noted by the applicant.
