FARMINGTON – An appeals board voted Thursday night to remand an approved site review application back to the Planning Board for reconsideration.

Appeals board members concluded that the approval of a barn conversion into two apartments at 247 High St. was based on erroneous information.

They decided that the Planning Board erred when it concluded that the project was an expansion of use rather than a change of use for a nonconforming structure. Members also concluded the Planning Board did not apply parking standards, document findings of fact, didn’t properly investigate whether there was a greater adverse impact on neighbors and inadvertently granted a variance.

David Sanders, an attorney for neighbors of the property owned by Mark and Heidi Goodwin of Farmington, claimed the board violated the town’s zoning ordinance.

Neighbors appealed the Planning Board’s decision to allow a barn attached to a once single-family home, now an existing duplex, to be converted to two more apartments, making the structure a four-family dwelling

Sanders said the lot was substandard and nonconforming and the structure, itself, was also not conforming.

He claimed the Planning Board was in error under the ordinance when it failed to apply standards of review required for nonconforming structures.

The use of a nonconforming structure may not be changed to another use unless the Planning Board, after receiving written application, determines that the new use will have no greater adverse impact on the subject or adjacent properties and resources than that of the existing use, Sanders said.

The zoning ordinance, adopted in 1999, divides the town into different areas based upon historic land use, culture, character and topography, and provides rules and regulations upon which development on those specific areas or zones ought to be encouraged, or even in some cases discouraged or prohibited by the town, Sanders noted in a letter to the board.

Sanders also claimed the Planning Board erred when it granted the Goodwins’ request for a change of use for their High Street property without adhering to a state and local requirement to document findings of fact.

The area in question has historically been a neighborhood of single-family homes with abutting yards.

It is no great surprise with a college campus nearby that the town is experiencing economic and developmental pressures to convert neighborhoods such as this one of single-family homes into apartment buildings, Sanders said.

The attorney also claimed the Goodwin lot was substandard. The lot only has 70 feet of frontage compared to the required minimum of 75 feet and only 11,760 square feet of lot area against the required minimum of 15,000 square feet.

Those minimums, Sanders stated, are for single-family homes.

Additionally, Sanders said the board did not adequately apply parking standards as required by the ordinance.

The Goodwins planned to replace grass with gravel and take down an old maple tree to make more parking. The Planning Board required them to put up fence at the rear of the property line, plant shrubs to block parking lights and address future drainage issues.

An attorney for the Planning Board, Frank Underkuffler told the appeals board, “You have got to realize the Planning Board is not a panel of judges.”

“The board is made up of lay people dealing with a 40-page zoning document, and though they didn’t write down the findings of fact, they did consider the impact on neighbors, which is apparent from listening to recordings of meetings and a hearing.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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