Court Opinion

ID: 9706641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:48:27.567395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:24.122132
License: Public Domain

HORNBY, Justice,
dissenting.
Although churches are a permitted use in a Portland single family residential zone, Grace Baptist Church’s proposal to build a 10,850 square foot gymnasium building provoked some concern among neighborhood residents. Grace Baptist’s final site plan showed landscaping toward the street side and a large wooded area to the rear of the proposed building, and an unpaved gravel parking area to the rear of a paved parking area (in the direction of water flowage, according to the plan contours). At the public hearing the Portland Planning Board’s discussion focused primarily on landscaping on the sides of the building to shield it from neighborhood view. When the question of drainage from the paved parking area arose, it was pointed out that the gravel area would absorb some of the runoff and that the land slopes downward toward the rear of the lot. The Board ultimately “voted to approve the final site plan for Grace Baptist Church’s new gymnasium building subject to approval of the planting plan by the city arborist.” Now, the Court holds, Grace Baptist can cut down the trees in the wooded area (40 medium pine trees), change the topography that affects the runoff and cover the unpaved parking area with bituminous concrete — all without further review by the Planning Board. I dissent.
Under Portland’s Site Plan Ordinance, Grace Baptist was responsible for preparing a final site plan for the City’s review *537before undertaking its original gymnasium development. The ordinance specifies certain things that must be included in the plan, such as topography (indicating both existing and proposed contours), location of water courses, marshes, rock outcroppings and wooded areas, a landscape plan, and the location and dimensions of all fencing and screening. Section 14-526(b)(l). The landowner must also describe any problems of drainage or topography or affirmatively represent that there are none. Section 14-526(b)(2)(f). The Planning Board is then required to approve the final site plan unless it makes specific findings of deficiencies — for example, paved areas that will impose undue burdens on sewer, sanitary and storm drains; onsite landscaping that does not provide adequate protection to neighboring properties; or failure to provide for the soil and drainage problems that the development will produce. Section 14-527(a). Each of these is considered a “deficiency” that the Board must describe in writing, explaining how it could be resolved or that it is incapable of resolution. Section 14-527(b).
In Grace Baptist’s final site plan there was no deficiency in landscaping or screening to the rear of the gymnasium because there was a large wooded area there between the new building and any neighboring property owners. There was no deficiency in drainage or water runoff because of the existing topography and the ability of the gravel parking area to absorb some of the runoff. Thus the Board could not have rejected the final site plan on either of these grounds. The Court now concludes, however, that the Board was required to make a specific condition of its approval the requirement that Grace Baptist not alter the wooded area nor the topography nor the status of the unpaved parking area. Because the Board did not list these as specific conditions, Grace Baptist can now alter them without Board approval.
It is hard to see how Grace Baptist could have been misled into thinking that the Planning Board would not rely upon Grace Baptist’s description of the site in the final plan it submitted for approval. The Court seems to distinguish between an area on the site where development is proposed and the rest of the site. The site plan ordinance makes no such distinction. If, as the Court says, the purpose of the final site plan is to enable the Board “to assess the impact of the proposed development on the surrounding area and, if required to further the purposes of the site plan ordinance, to impose specific conditions to its approval of the proposed development,” the developer’s description of the characteristics of the rest of the site is critical. If they are satisfactory, they cannot be considered deficiencies in the final site plan that prompt imposition of specific requirements for their resolution. Since it is the landowner’s plan that is being approved, not the Board’s, and since the landowner has described the site’s characteristics in the context of which it seeks approval, there should be no need for the Board to repeat each satisfactory element as a condition of the approval.
The surfacing of the gravel parking lot with bituminous concrete is the most egregious alteration; it should fail even under the Court’s analysis. This gravel parking lot was in fact a specified part of what the Court describes as the “proposed developed area” in Grace Baptist’s site plan. It was expressly labeled on the final site plan as “Unpaved Parking (Gravel).” When a developer thus states on its final site plan that it is constructing an unpaved, gravel parking lot, I cannot comprehend why the Planning Board’s approval must include as an extra condition the requirement that the unpaved parking lot be in fact unpaved. I do concur with the Court’s conclusion concerning the dimensions of the parking area.
The decision in this case will not have a monumental effect on new site plan proposals in Portland or elsewhere in Maine because planning boards will in the future presumably make all elements of a site plan express conditions of their approval. The decision does, however, have substantial significance for future development of site plans already approved and implemented. Landowners and planning boards will now dispute what part of the final site plan was the “proposed developed area,” the *538description of which is binding upon landowners (in the absence of future Board approvals), as distinguished from the rest of the plan which apparently has no significance. Equally important, the Court’s parsimonious reading of the Portland ordinance sets an unfortunate tone for our review of such laws as municipalities prepare to grapple with the increasingly difficult issue of Maine land use in the last decade of the 20th century.