FARMINGTON – The Board of Appeals granted a variance to LEAP Inc. on Wednesday, Dec. 29, allowing the organization to put more parking spaces into its Farmington Falls Road property.

According to Code Enforcement Officer Steve Kaiser, the social services organization needed a variance to get around a zoning law that requires a 24-foot aisle in all parking areas in the town.

“If you’re doing a new driveway, you have to have it be 24 feet in width. In this particular situation, LEAP had physical constraints. They didn’t have room to put the 24-foot aisle in,” said Kaiser. The organization wanted to put more parking into its facility so that visitors would not have to drive “all the way through the trailer park next door” to find parking at the office.

LEAP, which stands for Life Enrichment Advancing People, is a Farmington-based nonprofit organization that is “devoted to supporting people with developmental disabilities and mental retardation to be actively involved in their home communities,” according its Web site.