FARMINGTON – Planning Board members are scheduled Monday to reconsider an application to renovate a barn into two apartments at 247 High St.

The Board of Appeals concluded last month that the Planning Board based its approval of a site review application for the conversion, which included conditions, on erroneous information.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. downstairs in the training room at the Municipal Building.

The appeals board sent the case back to the Planning Board for reconsideration because members said the Planning Board erred when it considered the project was an expansion of use rather than a change of use for a nonconforming structure.

Appeals board members also concluded the Planning Board did not apply parking standards adequately, document findings of fact, didn’t adequately investigate whether there was a greater adverse impact on neighbors, and inadvertently granted a variance.

David Sanders, an attorney for neighbors of the property who appealed the Planning Board’s decision, claimed the board violated the town’s zoning ordinance.

The property in question is owned by Mark and Heidi Goodwin of Farmington. The couple are renovating the property, which includes an existing two-unit apartment building attached to the barn.

Sanders said the lot was substandard and nonconforming and the structure was also nonconforming.

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 in 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 here has historically been a neighborhood of single-family homes with abutting yards.

The attorney also claimed the Goodwin’s lot was substandard, which 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.

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 a fence at the rear of the property line, plant shrubs to block parking lights and address future drainage issues.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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