Title: In re Duncan

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P.
40 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
Court, 111 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 of any errors in order
that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                No. 90-261


In re Robert Duncan for C.O.T.S.             Supreme Court
and in re Robert Duncan (Vaughn
and Jean Moody, David and Karen              On Appeal from
Ely, John Brown and C.R.O.O.N.E.,            Chittenden Superior Court
Appellants)
                                             October Term, 1990



Stephen B. Martin, J.

Portnow, Little & Cicchetti, P.C., Burlington, for appellants

Bauer, Gravel & Watson, Burlington, for appellees


PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Dooley and Morse, JJ., and Peck, J. (Ret.) and
          Cashman, D.J., Specially Assigned


     DOOLEY, J.   Certain neighbors of a proposed single room occupancy
(SRO) facility, along with an organization called Concerned Residents and
Owners of the Old North End (CROONE), appeal from an order of the Chittenden
Superior Court granting a zoning permit and site plan approval to the
Committee for Temporary Shelter (COTS) to convert a building at 184 Elmwood
Avenue in Burlington into the SRO facility.  We affirm.
     The building in question has housed four apartments on the ground floor
and a bingo hall on the upper floors.  COTS has a contract to buy the
building and proposes to convert the upper floors into SRO units, primarily
to house persons in Burlington who are currently homeless.  Extensive
internal changes would be made to the building, including adding an access
ramp and an elevator to the upper floors for persons with disabilities.  The
SRO units would share common kitchen and bathroom facilities and common area
rooms for recreation.  The residents would be required to sign one-year
leases.  The building would contain a twenty-four-hour-per-day on-site
manager employed by COTS.
     The current bingo hall is a preexisting, nonconforming use under the
City of Burlington Zoning Ordinance.  It operates three nights and one
afternoon per week, and as many as 175 patrons attend.  According to the
Burlington Zoning Ordinance, the bingo operation should have forty-two off-
street parking spaces.  In fact, it has no parking for patrons, and they end
up parking throughout the neighborhood when the hall is in operation.
     COTS first sought a zoning permit from the Burlington Zoning Board.
The facility falls in a R-20 Medium Residential District and under { 8(B)(9)
of the Burlington Zoning Ordinance could be approved, if at all, only as a
conditional use.  Appellants and other neighbors [hereinafter neighbors]
appeared in opposition.  The Board granted conditional use approval by oral
decision on September 11, 1989, followed by a written decision on October
13, 1989.  COTS also went to the Burlington Planning Commission for site
plan approval.  That approval was granted on October 12, 1989.
     The neighbors appealed both decisions to the Chittenden Superior Court.
In a de novo proceeding, the court upheld the issuance of the permit and
site plan approval.  In its order of April 23, 1990, the court approved the
application of COTS, "pursuant to the plans, specifications, and site plans
admitted into evidence."  The neighbors appeal from this order, raising the
following claims of error:  (1) conditional use approval cannot be given
because the City of Burlington failed to adopt the conditional use approval
standards set out in 24 V.S.A. { 4407(2); (2) the COTS facility fails to
meet the off-street parking requirements of the City of Burlington, and COTS
failed to seek a variance from these requirements; (3) a preexisting,
nonconforming use may not be changed into a conditional use; (4) the court's
findings in support of its conclusion that the facility meets conditional
use standards are clearly erroneous; and (5) the approval order is deficient
for failure to specify exactly what was approved.
                                    I.
     The relevant ordinance provision states, "[b]oarding and rooming houses
. . . shall be permitted only if approved in advance as a conditional use by
the zoning board of adjustment."  Burlington Zoning Ordinance { 8(B)(9).
Nowhere does the ordinance state the standards that an applicant must meet
in order to receive conditional use approval.  The zoning enabling statute
authorizes conditional uses in zoning ordinances "if general and specific
standards to which each permitted use must conform are prescribed in the
zoning regulations."  24 V.S.A. { 4407(2).  The neighbors argue that in the
absence of the general standards required by statute, conditional use
approval cannot be given.
     The identical argument was raised and resolved in In re White, No. 89-
215, slip op. at 8 (Vt. Nov. 21, 1990).  In White, we held that since the
statute requires that a municipality adopt the general standards enumerated
in the statute, conditional use approval can be given under the statutory
standards even if the ordinance does not repeat them.  The evidence here was
that the Burlington Zoning Board used the statutory standards.  The trial
court likewise used the statutory standards.  The failure of the City of
Burlington to repeat the standards in the ordinance is not grounds to deny
conditional use approval.
                                    II.
     The neighbors' second argument is that the COTS proposal fails to meet
the off-street parking requirements of the Burlington Zoning Ordinance.
Section 23 of the ordinance establishes the number of parking spaces that
must be provided on-site or at a location within 400 feet of the site,
depending on the use to be made of the building.  The section comes into
effect whenever a structure is "erected, altered or established."
Burlington Zoning Ordinance { 23(A).  The parties appear to agree that under
the ordinance, the number of parking spaces that would normally be required
is seventeen.  However, the requirements can be reduced up to fifty percent
where the "regulation is unnecessarily stringent."  Id., { 23(E).  In this
case, the site has seven spaces, slightly less than half of the required
amount, and additional spaces are available on nearby properties although
all are more than 400 feet from the COTS building.
     COTS answer to the apparent parking deficiency is that the current
bingo hall is a preexisting nonconforming use that generates a far greater
parking need than the COTS use will generate.  From this fact, they argue
that they are "grandfathered" and don't have to meet the parking
requirements of the ordinance.  Their argument is supported factually by a
showing that the current lack of space poses a serious problem because bingo
hall patrons park throughout the neighborhood, and that if the ordinance
had applied, the hall would have been required to provide forty-two on-site
parking spaces.  In support of their legal position, they offered the
testimony of the city's assistant director for planning and zoning.  He
testified that where a new use needs less on-site parking than an existing
use, they are considered to be "grandfathered" to the extent of the
deficiency of the prior use and the city zoning staff does not demand
greater on-site parking.  He stated that this interpretation of the
ordinance had been in effect for the full three and one-half years he had
been part of the city zoning staff.
     The zoning board apparently followed the staff interpretation of the
ordinance.  Instructions that accompany the application for zoning board
action state that changes of non-residential uses in residential
neighborhoods are reviewed to insure that the "new uses will be no more
detrimental or harmful to the neighborhood than the previous use."  The
board's approval stated:
         The proposed uses will be less adverse to the traffic in
         the area than was the use of the building for bingo
         games but because the parking is extremely limited for
         even the proposed uses, our approval is subject to the
         applicant obtaining site plan approval with special
         attention to the parking from the Planning Commission.

The planning commission did give site plan approval, a decision also
appealed by the neighbors.  The decision requires the site to have a minimum
of six parking spaces.  The trial court accepted the testimony of the zoning
staff member and concluded that the on-site parking requirements of the
ordinance do not apply to the COTS proposal because it is "grandfathered."
The court specifically found that no variance was required to comply with
parking requirements.
     The neighbors argue that the ordinance must be construed as requiring
full compliance with the on-site parking requirements whenever there is a
conversion of non-residential uses, particularly if there is internal
renovation to facilitate the new use.  We agree that the ordinance could be
drafted to state this rule.  See 24 V.S.A. { 4408(b)(1) (municipality may
control changes of nonconforming uses to another nonconforming use);
Hudson-Thompson, Inc. v. Leslie C. King Co.,