FARMINGTON – By a 4-2 vote, the Appeals Board granted a setback variance Wednesday for an arts center at the University of Maine at Farmington.

The variance allows a setback of 4 feet instead of the standard 10 feet.

The university needs the variance to create a lobby area that would serve the proposed Emery Community Arts Center and Alumni Theater. The arts center is designed to be attached to the west side of Alumni Theater with a lobby accessed from Academy Street. The lobby would include an art gallery and space for showing art, architect Scott Slarsky of Boston and Damariscotta told the board.

The lobby would fully enclose and preserve Alumni Theater by extending the northeast wall beyond the front of the theater in respect to its symmetrical Georgian Revival architecture, he said.

Recessed between Merrill Hall and the Farmington Public Library, the lobby would bring Alumni Theater forward and give it more life from the view on Academy Street, he said.

“The real question is what is more important, the historic facade of Alumni Theater or the setback,” Slarsky told the board.

Alumni Theater already sits within the setback. Built in the 1930s the building is grandfathered under town ordinances.

“No matter what we do we need a variance because the theater is in the setback,” he said.

The proposed arts center needs to extend nearly six feet beyond Alumni Theater, bringing it to about 15 feet from a Farmington Public Library addition.

Library trustees attended the meeting but were not given the opportunity to speak.

“The library has concerns,” Juanita Bean Smith, president of the library’s board of trustees, said Thursday. They include the library’s drainage, considering previous water problems, parking and access to the facility during construction, she said.

She added that the university, engineers and the architect have been gracious about addressing those concerns.

Action on the variance was needed before the plan can go to the Planning Board.