ZBA Minutes - January 18, 2005

Mount Kisco Zoning Board of Appeals

Minutes

Tuesday January 18, 2005 7:30 p.m.

Mount Kisco Village Hall

Karen Schleimer: I would like to call the January 18, 2005 meeting to order at 7:30p.m. At the Municipal Building Mount Kisco, New York

Members Present: Karen Schleimer

Robert Marino

Max Lippolis

Mickey Zucker

Harold Boxer

Members Absent: Don Rose

Staff Present: Mr. John Donahue

Karen Schleimer: The first order of business would be the minutes of the meeting of December 21, 2004. Any comments?

Max Lippolis: Yes there are a few corrections. On page 3 line 52 I think that should read 36 feet. Page 4 line 47 change 300 feet to 30 feet. Page 5 line 5 it should read between 300 or 336 feet. Page 6 line 31 should say you do understand.

Karen Schleimer: I have in the members present it should be Mr. Zucker was not here and it should read in members absent Don Rose.

Can I get a motion to approve the minutes as amended?

Max Lippolis: Motion to approve the amended minutes

Robert Marino: 2^nd

Karen Schleimer: Mickey Zucker obstained, the rest of the board all ayes.

The only matter before us this evening is continuing case Premier Collection. To reiterate we have a denial from the acting building inspector dated November 29, 2004. The application to renovate the building and to add a 24,000 square foot addition was denied. Regarding the length of the building under section 110-25c9 the code. Maximum building length is equal to 160 feet. Therefore cannot be branded and this does not comply with this regulation.

John Arons councel for the applicant, Erik Kaeyer architect, Sean Coughlin, Rich Stavridis representing Premier.

John Arons: Thank you for affording my client the opportunity to bring me tonight. I apologize in advance if I am too repetitive over what you heard last time. I will try to summarize what we believe are the reasons why this board should approve our requested variance. In doing so I reviewed the zoning ordinance you're zoning ordinance and the village law. I want to point out to the board. What you have before you is a site plan of the property and it shows the steep slopes. There are two steep slope portions of the property in the front and the back. In this aqua color that represents the delineation of a wet land buffer area. So the area to the north west of the property is a wet land buffer. The green that you see to the south of the property is the existing Tyler building. The final configuration if the variance is granted and the building is built is the green and then the yellow, which is the building to be added to the existing building part of which will be torn down. (Viewing site plan) The property as you may recall is 4.2 acres in a one acre zone. It has 280 feet in depth and 630 in length. So it is a very irregular shaped property as far as how it can be utilized and built. We scaled off the steep slopes in the front which is a 110 feet, the steep slopes in the back which is approximately 30 feet and it leaves this flat plateau of 140 feet. So that is what we are working with. Essentially that is what has lead us to the plan that is before you. The ideal is to develop for this use a square building. This site doesn't work that way. So the proposal before you is to enlarge the existing building and put it all on one straight line. Which is not necessarily the most efficient from the functioning, but it really is the only way to utilize this site. I would like to explain to you. You may know to some extent and there maybe some voids in what you know as to why my client is here making this application tonight. As you probably do know they signed a contract to purchase the property to the north from the village. That contract was signed a number of years ago and the concept was that the property would be developed with these uses plus additional dealership uses. After much a do with primarily the NYDEP it was determined that, that site in of itself would not accommodate the proposed uses. This is primarily because of drainage retention and access. The access through the frontage on that property together with the required drainage retention of the NYCDEP basically prevented it from being developed. The next step in evolution was to purchase this property and combine it with the village property and end up with both parcels being developed. My client went to the owner of this property, Tyler, they were not in the best of negotiating positions and ended up with a contract that was signed about 20 months ago. They had to put ½ the purchase price down non-refundable, nom- contingent. It was the only way they could continue the process of trying to develop what they wanted to on the village. The village deal fell apart and they were left with just this parcel. That is why we are here tonight, to come up with a way to develop just this parcel in the most reasonable and fishable fashion. The portion of the property that they can utilize is the area in between the two oranges (referring to site plan) the two steep slope areas, and south of the wet land buffer.

Max Lippolis: To be noted that the contract for this property Tyler Graphics was signed on October 2004. (Fire Horn unable to hear comment).

Sean Coughlin: The contract on property 20 months ago at that point in time we needed to put down 50% of the purchase price.

John Arons: So the plan, the architect, applicant, the engineer came up with a plan to minimize the impact and disturbance on this site by putting all the proposed uses into one board, and that of course came into conflict with the 160 foot maximum length of the zoning ordinance. If the board has any questions about why there is this need to or the desire of the applicants put all of this into one building, Sean and Richard are the best people to answer this. As you know the site is on Kisco Avenue its elevated above Kisco Avenue and its visibility you can see from here. This distorts what one would see from Kisco Avenue because as you know the property rises pretty steeply off the road. The building is set back on the flat area. This is a somewhat of a depiction of what would be proposed and how it fits on the site up the hill. The Kisco Avenue area is pretty well developed with uses that are not inconsistent with what we are proposing. The buildings that were built many years ago during the urban renewal days and I believe you would have to agree is going to be an improvement to what is there now on this site and many of the other buildings in that area. I believe the purpose of the requirement of a maximum of 160 feet is to try to provide for a less crowded development of parcels in this zone. It applies to all parcels in the one acre zone. So if we had one acre or two acres or in this case four acres if we were 100 feet across or in this case 600 feet across it is the same standard. There is no relationship in the ordinance between the length of the building and the width of the site. So I believe that because of the shape of this parcel the 160 foot meet maximum length building, whether it is 160 feet or in this case 336 feet there is going to be plenty of open space on this case the northerly side of the property. We are not moving the building closer to the vacant land on the north end. Just attaching it to what is there now. In looking at what the NYS Village Law says you should do in making your determination what criteria you should consider. The first is in what type of change in the neighborhood will this proposal have for granting the variance would have. We would submit that it will have no change in the neighborhood. To make usage permitted it is the same use that is all over the place in that area. The property could be developed with two buildings as I have said, ending up with the same length buildings, but a greater disturbance than what we are proposing. If we stretched the buildings out and separated them which we could do on under the ordinance, we would end up disturbing more. Coming into conflict or getting to close to the wet lands buffer. So that's one of the main reasons why we are trying to keep it all condensed. We considered what other alternatives were available and why it is important to keep it in one building, but there is really no other fishable way to develop this site and achieve what the applicants' purposes and goals without the variance. I know the board I am sure is concerned with the substantial request that is being made. We are asking for something that is 336 feet when ordinance says 160 feet but in reading the cases and reading the statue substantiality is only relevant in relation to determent caused by the extent of the variance and in this case there is no detriment. Whether this building was 336 feet or two buildings of 336 feet it is the same impact and the same visual impact from wherever anyone can see it in the village. So I don't believe you would find any adverse or negative effect on the environment or the neighborhood. That is basically it.

Karen Schleimer: The one we skipped was whether it was self created?

John Arons: I said that at the beginning I tried to explain why and how we got into this situation.

Karen Schleimer: I do want to make one point. We had mentioned it last week the title to the property is held in a different name than the name of the applicant.

Sean Coughlin: The Premier Collection is the applicant and HVA is talking ownership of the property.

Karen Schleimer: The relationship between the two?

Sean Coughlin: One will be the landlord and one will be tenant.

Karen Schleimer: So what I am hearing is number one the size of the site is unusual in Mount Kisco. The topographical issues and the wet lands issues are making a very significant difference here, limiting where you are going to put things. Maybe I need to hear more why the buildings need to be connected and why they need to be the size they are. We are charged as granting the minimum variance necessary. If we say yes to you we don't want the guy behind you coming up to us and saying you gave them double what is in the ordinance. I need a little more background as to why we can't do anything else except this.

Sean Coughlin: This is the floor plan. This is the existing building here, the part that is not being torn down. This is the part we are going to have. What we are starting with here is the service department we have a two car port ago. As you can see there is not a whole lot more room behind to do anything else. As far making the building go back any further. Just have to drive to get through to the garage doors here and here. These are existing doors.

Karen Schleimer: Show me the flow of car traffic.

(Viewing site plan)

Sean Coughlin: The car traffic will be the driveway around stopping here for customers. That is as far as they will go. This will be detail and prep over here. This will be break area for technicians this corner of the building. These are all lifts to repair vehicles. This is storage. This right now shows as a service manager's office I am not sure if it stays that way. This is service for customers, manager's offices here, waiting area for customers to do work. We call it a business center. It will have wireless internet service, cubicles in which to work. This is going to be service these three offices here. When the customers come in and talk with the service advisor it will be done in these offices. This will be new car delivery. This will be done inside so that it is more comfortable for the customer; the salesperson makes it a little better experience. This is a child's play area. As you can see there is babysitting while car shopping. These are sales consultation offices. Here in the showroom there will be four cars only. We are not trying to load the showroom with 110 cars. These will be for Landrover on this side. This will also be sales consultation offices. This will be a staircase going from the underground parking structure upstairs. This will be the elevator. This will be a manager's office. This will be the Jaguar on this side. Again there are only 4 cars.

Richard Stavridis: This is very difficult for us to do what we are going to do. We are actually shrinking things down to make it work.

Erik Kaeyer: We should actually talk about the consolidation.

Sean Coughlin: We are consolidating the showroom on North Bedford Road which is in the old Midas shop just north of the Sunoco station. We are bringing our service facility, which is currently in the old Murphy Brothers storage on Kisco Avenue. Used cars will go from currently the Kalaegian Building; we are sharing the building with the rug store. Our corporate headquarters is currently down in Elmsford. We are renting a facility down there for short term until we can pull this all together

Richard Stavridis: The number of parking areas that we are going to consolidate.

Karen Schleimer: What is that now?

Sean Coughlin: Currently we have parked cars pretty much all over Mount Kisco.

Karen Schleimer: In terms of new cars?

Sean Coughlin: In terms of new cars, used cars.

Karen Schleimer: Cars for sale?

Sean Coughlin: No. Mostly inventory, cars that will be under the building.

We typically will have two months supply of cars. That is just the inventory to sell out of. Currently they are parked all over Mount Kisco. That is part of the reason why we are developing this facility.

John Arons: You should add that the extra 30 feet of the north end of the building it's really not building it's just underneath parking structure.

Karen Schleimer: We went through that last week. In fact if you look at a topographical you'll see in fact that the underground is above ground over there.

Sean Coughlin: Currently it is a ridge that will become a parking structure. In any case we don't disagree with you. That why we changed it to 336 feet.

Karen Schleimer: That includes that parking area?

Sean Coughlin: Yes

Harold Boxer: What color signifies the front?

Sean Coughlin: The purple area. This is the parts storage. Even that we managed to do a very space constraint. We were suppose to have 6,000 feet and we did it very creatively.

Rich Stavridis: That is not an open area.

Sean Coughlin: This will be entirely parts storage. As you can see we are not wasting space. We are not holding space open just for the sake of having space to expand later on. It is as being used.

Karen Schleimer: I guess my concern is that I am going to ask you for some information on a financial basis as to why it doesn't work small. We need to justify this. I realize that when you talk to other car dealerships that I know when selling one brand of car doesn't work anymore. With a variance this size we need some backup. We need some information that brings it home as to why this is really needed. I can start chopping off playrooms and things like that.

Sean Coughlin: Even if we chopped off a playroom let's say, it still takes a certain number of people to sell the number of automobiles that we sell.

Karen Schleimer: My job is to make it smaller and your job is to sell me on why this is necessary. Not just because you want it but that it is necessary.

Rich Stavridis: I think Sean said basically to support what we have we need to have sales people, technicians. That is where we are right now.

Karen Schleimer: I understand that. You can have 5 sales people you can have 20 sales people. I am trying to put this in perspective.

Sean Coughlin: Currently we are selling between new and used Jaguars/Landrover approximately 450 - 500 cars a year. Somewhere in the order of 10-12 cars per month. It would take that many sales people to handle that. Not only that we are open approximately 70 hours a week. The sales people work a 45-hour schedule. So I have to stagger them in order to do that. The number of sales people would be very hard to cut. Currently we are servicing approximately 35 cars a day. It takes quite awhile to work on. Landrover in particular it is very intensive. It takes a long time to do anything on them. We have quite a few technicians that we need to have to service our customers. It is important for us. If we are out any longer than a week or two weeks on service we will start to lose business. We will start to have very unhappy customers. Customer Service is a critical portion of our business. CSI-Customer Satisfaction. If we don't get good customer satisfaction people won't buy cars from us.

Karen Schleimer: How many bays?

Sean Coughlin: 22. Some of them are for prep. When I say prep it means to recondition which means car washing, and detailing. It is not heavy-duty car washing just getting them ready to be waxed and sold. So that takes up basically this whole area of the shop. The rest of this is repair. We also have to have an area for alignment machine and equipment so technically that is not a working bay, it's something that each technician will drive a car on or off. The rest of this is where the technician works on the automobiles. Currently we have 13 technicians.

Mickey Zucker: Does our code provide the maximum square footage of the building on this lot size? Does code allow two buildings?

Erik Kaeyer: The maximum building coverage is 50% code is 16%.

Mickey Zucker: Is that permitted?

Karen Schleimer: Permitted is 50%.

Mickey Zucker: Would we not be having this discussion if there were two separate buildings?

Max Lippolis: That would be the case.

Sean Coughlin: If there were two separate buildings that were 160 feet or less, correct.

Mickey Zucker: On this property given the wetland you wouldn't be able to have two buildings.

Sean Coughlin: WE could probably manage it. It wouldn't be desirable for our operations. Operating out of two buildings means you are walking between buildings all the time. It brings up safety issues in the wintertime.

Mickey Zucker: If you came in and said we want two separate buildings and each one is going to 150 feet that would be perfect. Therefore it's going to start where this one starts there is going to be a space in the middle and end where that one ends. Just on the right side of the wetlands. We wouldn't be seeing you.

John Arons: The point I tried to make in the introduction was that not only does that not work for the functioning of the building, but it won't change the effect of the development of this site in anyway what so ever. So if you came come up with any negative other than the substantiality of what we are requesting, if you came come up with any negative it wouldn't change.

Max Lippolis: I think what the bigger question is here and bigger issue in front of us. Is it so compelling to the point to allow one continuous building to completely obliterate the building code. Is it so compelling that therefore it would allow a trigger effect to your nearby competitors that are down the street up the street, other dealerships. That is then going to examine their physical layout. Also come to us and say that we need one continuous building also. All of them may be on a flatter piece of land and they can start crunching their numbers to say let's be within the maximum coverage and lets be within some of the other perimeters that we have. The fact is that if they come to us and say, it is compelling because yes we are a dealership so we need on continuous building and yes we need 50-100 feet whatever it may be. Do we allow that trigger effect to happen. The end result is something to talk about here.

Sean Coughlin: You have to consider our application on its merits and the next guy's application on its merits. I believe we presented to you compelling reasons why the proposal is not going to have any detrimental effect and off set against that are the reasons we presented in support of the request. The configurations, and topography of the property.

Max Lippolis: Why does the building need to be so high? Why does it need to be 25 feet high?

Sean Coughlin: We are bringing our cooperate office in. The company owns 11 dealerships. We have centralized office function that handles most of the accounting. We are moving them up also.

Max Lippolis: So why does the have to go there? Why can't that go to one the other location that is close by?

John Arons: Is there any way you can utilize the second story that for the uses you are showing on the first story?

Sean Coughlin: There would me no way for us to get automobiles up.

Max Lippolis: What I am referring to is that you are saying the legal impact is so little by having a one story “ it won't effect the neighborhood at all”. Yet we are going up to 25 feet and I know the maximum is 40 feet. I think you actually tip off a little bit higher. Somewhere around 30-36b feet would be where the Jaguar emblem is. If we are looking to minimally impact, it has beautiful landscaping and beautiful cars. Wouldn't part of that be effecting the visual aspect of that piece of property also have to do with the height as well as the width?

John Arons: I believe that the analysis you have to consider is one of what is the effect of the granting of the variance. WE are not asking for a height variance. We are asking for a length variance. If the length variance is what creates some sort of a detrimental effect on the neighborhood or the community then our burden is greater. I don't think it is related to the height. This is so much lower that what is permitted on your ordinance.

Karen Schleimer: The problem I'm having is whether the benefit of the applicant can be achieved by some other method.

John Arons: It has to the applicant not just some other method.

Karen Schleimer: Fishable you show me.

John Arons: I think we put into the record the explanation why my client believes these uses need to be in one building and this is the minimum size building that they can do it.

Karen Schleimer: I don't feel that I have enough information when I was talking about the economics of this size of dealership and this consolidation. Why it just couldn't be just one type of car, which would cut down the size of the garage maintenance area and cut down the size of the showroom. I am not sure that I feel comfortable at this point saying there is no other way to deal with this.

Rich Stavridis: If we were to tell you that the manufacture or whoever you want to call it is saying that you need to have so many sales people so many technicians per we would not even be close to the cutting line.

Sean Coughlin: We actually had to have Jaguar/Landrover give us special permission to something. As it is the showroom is small.

Karen Schleimer: I am going to need something and right now I don't have anything. I have you saying that you want it this size because you think this what works. I don't know that.

Sean Coughlin: I we did Landrover stand alone or Jaguar stand alone in this facility and had to build something separate for the other franchise it would not be financial liable.

Max Lippolis: You went in the agreement knowing you had a limitation of building. You went into this purchase of this property and closed on it as early as October knowing that you had a limitation of building length on it. With some restraints upon the one continuous building that you could put whether it is one car dealership or two. I understand what happened with the town, but this is a different piece of property.

Sean Coughlin: What happened in the beginning when we were negotiating with the town of Mount Kisco to purchase the 50 acre donating back apart of it. When we went through the preliminary engineering on it we did not have enough space to handle the showrooms that we needed to put up there and to handle waste water treatment that NYDEP requires. Storm water management.

Erik Kaeyer: In access of the site because of the deepness of the site between Kisco Avenue and the wider portion.

Sean Coughlin: What the town recommended to us was that we purchase Tyler at that particular point in time. At that time Tyler had us over a barrel basically because we couldn't do anything without the Tyler property. Originally when we purchased the Tyler property we put down a 50% non0refundable deposit almost 2 years ago. It was not intended to do this.

Max Lippolis: So this purchase at the suggestion of the town? With the understanding that the town and discussing the project that under review and considering this is an option for you to access that property you purchased that property. Then that whole situation fell through. So lets call it what it is. You didn't purchase this property to build a building on it.

Sean Coughlin: We originally purchased the property to build a showroom on it.

Max Lippolis: What were the plans for that showroom? What was the length of the building?

Erik Kaeyer: It was actually approximately the same length separated into two buildings.

Max Lippolis: Was that ever presented to the Planning Board?

Sean Coughlin: We never got that far.

Max Lippolis: So it was never formally presented that a building that would extend beyond what the zoning ordinance was and that property was never formally presented so therefore it was never formally approved by anybody. There was no understanding that this would be allowed given the fact that it was be used as an access to the other property.

Erik Kaeyer: Nothing was approved.

Max Lippolis: So you purchase this property and were under review with a plan in place and for all the mitigating conditions it didn't happen. These are decisions that are made by business people and they try to get you to your best advantage and in order to present the best possible plan. That is what you did and that fell through now you have this property.

Sean Coughlin: This is not self inflicted. Going back to what the statue was.

Max Lippolis: Regardless of self inflicted, but it is not also purchased with knowing that hey if I couldn't build there I'd build a building here. You didn't purchase for the purposes of building a full facility. You purchased it as a way to circumvent the problems you were having and also augmented another showroom there, but it wasn't built with the purpose of building a whole facility. Correct?

John Arons: The whole point of the discussion that you are having with us is this self-created? It is no longer relevant to this type of a request. What is relevant is what you have to balance. What is the detriment to the granting of this variance verses what is the benefit to the applicant. Self-created is just one factor which we tried to explain to you. It is not like we bought this piece of property intending to build this and we came in with this request. I tried to explain to you the circumstances that are leading up to this. If the village property had gone through we wouldn't be here with this, but it didn't. You can't throw us out. The court won't let you throw us out if you say you entered into this contract knowing that the ordinance said maximum length of 160 feet and we are not going to vary it. You can't do that.

Mr. Donahue: Mr. Arons is quoting, that is one of the factors. Whether this was self created. There is no question that it was self created, because this ordinance was in effect. When this parcel was purchased you knew the fact that there is 160-foot limitation on the length of the building. You bought it with that knowledge. That alone will not determine the board's decision but they can consider it.

John Arons: What I have been trying to do is explain that this was not your normal self created situation. Where they entered into this piece, contracted by this piece of property to develop it on it's own in which case I would certainly agree with you. I think the circumstances that led us to our being here tonight are totally different than that.

John Donahue: The argument that what you did with the village of mount Kisco in negotiation has nothing to do with this. The discussion about failure of negotiations is between you and the village and the purchase of that property because of what New York City did has something to do with the purchase of that property. For what is before the board tonight is this application that says you are asking to add an addition onto an existing building and thereby create a new building of 336 feet in length. This other discussion is irrelevant.

Mickey Zucker: I think what is relevant is what we have been talking about who gets hurt if we say yes? What is the determent? I must admit I am having a little difficulty seeing how we suffer if we say yes to this as opposed to saying how much separation does there have to be to create technically two buildings. Is a one foot separation enough to have two separate building? I just fail to see what the real difference is. Especially looking at how this sits on the property just a personal opinion. It seems like the ordinance is creating something which is not real. Whether it is one building or two building. It would have no difference as far as appearance from the street. That is what concerns me. Don't see anybody getting hurt from this.

Karen Schleimer: I think we have to one by one re-think this situation.

Rich Stavridis: I think when you look at the layout of this property it is a unique piece. You are not going to everybody coming to and saying I have the same situation.

Karen Schleimer: Let's look through it. You have the steep slope in the front, which limits your ability to reshape the building.

Sean Coughlin: It un-buildable.

Karen Schleimer: Let's go through the exercise. You can't go back for the same reason because of steep slopes.

Sean Coughlin: We can't build anything here because of the wetland buffer.

Mickey Zucker: That doesn't matter because that is a length issue.

Karen Schleimer: Well you can still separate the buildings, with what you have.

Sean Coughlin: We could. The idea being this is better for us to observe the letter of the law and create something that is number one visually not going to be much different. It will cause us a lot more headache and give us a lot less function in the building.

Karen Schleimer: The size of the parcel again.

John Arons: 4.2 acres in a one acre zone.

Karen Schleimer: What you said when you started was that the requirement of 160 feet is the same for any lot of any size.

John Arons: You could build a 160 foot long building on a parcel of land that is 190 feet. You could build our building 336 with another 30, so you could build it on 366. So if you had a parcel of width of 366 feet you could build in theory this building. But we have a 600 feet plus.

Karen Schleimer: You've got 4 acres. The only reason we are going for the length is because of the topography. The village property is over here and Curtis is over here. The truth of the matter is that even if you acquired a strip land it is not going to make any difference to your request. Obviously going further up the hill would not work.

Sean Coughlin: We can't bring the building back up this steep slope.

John Arons: We have spent a lot of time trying to make this a viable area for the development.

Sean Coughlin: This building could not extend this way because of the steep slope.

Karen Schleimer: So there is no way to get over that. Even if you wanted to buy some of the property behind it you can't get there? I have a very strange question. We had signs that were certain size and we gave them a break. If there were two buildings connected by a breezeway?

Harold Boxer: I agree with Mickey. If we make the m go back and it is only a couple of inches you don't accomplish anything. With the way the impact goes each piece of land is unique. Some on the west can't come back and say well they got it across the street, because you have to take each piece land on its own. Yes they can come back and say you gave it over there and its our job we did but this why because this land is this and the building is not that and you can't have it.

Max Lippolis: Could you clarify the financial hardship that results in having two buildings? I am not talking about the inconvenience.

Sean Coughlin: Erik could probably detail that a little better than I can. It is more expensive.

Erik Kaeyer: It is probably more of an insurance issue. You have to go outside and someone slips you are creating potential problem.

Max Lippolis: People parking their cars and walking to your showroom and is that not the same thing?

Sean Coughlin: More for worker compensation. Technicians that are working all day and the big part of the function of the technician are moving back and forth between here and here.

Karen Schleimer: You are talking about parts.

Sean Coughlin: Parts which would be in the new section. There are going to be two things. First of all the technician would literally have to walk outside the building to get parts for his vehicle which would be a major hardship for a technician. They work for all intense purposes piece meal. There are a certain number of hours they have to produce a certain amount of work. If they have to spend their time walking out and around to the parts department down and back again that is a hardship.

John Arons: Maybe if you see the nature of the uses again you'll see what we are speaking about. You have all of the services over here and these guys need access to the parts which is here.

Sean Coughlin: This happens right here. That is what this door is.

Karen Schleimer: Separating service from the parts is a problem

Sean Coughlin: That is a huge financial problem.

John Arons: These two have to stay. This whole new car showroom and separate that. It's the question of what is the interrelationship.

Karen Schleimer: What would you accomplish? You would still need a variance. At that point it is less of a variance and doesn't make any sense.

Max Lippolis: So this would in essence the largest car dealership in Westchester County correct. It would be a rather larger dealership?

Sean Coughlin: It would be much larger. It would be medium size; I wouldn't say a whole lot more than that.

Rich Stravidis: To give you an example Westchester BMW single line is probably twice what we have here.

Harold Boxer: How big do you think the Toyota/Endurance building is?

Sean Coughlin: It is probably 20-30,000 square feet.

Erik Kaeyer: Actually one of the beauties of this is that you are really not going to see that many cars. Most car dealerships see cars all over, not beauty on their point of view, they would like you see all the cars. But what they are actually showing is probably in the range of 15 cars.

Max Lippolis: I understand you want a bigger dealership and I understand you want to consolidate some other point so your business. I have heard you say you want to do that. I haven't heard we need to do this.

Sean Coughlin: Financially? I will be saving money by doing consolidating this operation.

Max Lippolis: Can we quantify that and can we get some backup to that? Am I out of line asking for that, because I would like understanding why you need and there is a difference between wants and need? To me I am still trying to graffle with the fact that you want a nice large dealership on property that allows you 160 foot building. I want a lot of things but it doesn't mean I am always going to get them. I still need to know why you need two and I know you can start talking about the ratio of technicians to cars and all those things but what is your hardship by only having.

John Arons: It is an interesting question but John help me here. We do not have discussed financial hardship in support of a variance.

John Donahue: The feasibility you have to discuss. You have to put into the record as the applicant why it's not feasible to have to have two buildings.

John Arons: And why do we want to consolidate everything.

John Donahue: But that is what they are asking for. The board is asking for feasibility in backup numbers and economic data in writing. I think they want it. Saying if we do it this way it is going to cost us X dollars if we have two separate buildings these are our additional costs, these are our additional expenses. If we have one building we will save all of this.

Rich Stavridis: The sad part is we can do two buildings there is no question we can do two buildings. What do we accomplish by doing two buildings?

Max Lippolis: Then why was the building code ever created? I agree with the building code. I wasn't with the guy at the table when the code was created. It obviously was created for a reason.

Rich Stavridis: Then there is the question why are you here? If there is a code why are we discussing it?

John Donahue: The point is it is judicial. The burden is upon the applicant. You have to convince them. What they are saying is give us some more information for the record as to why this feasibility matter that one building is more feasible than two buildings.

Karen Schleimer: Let's just run through the factors to see where we are and then we will make a decision what we want to do. Whether an undesirable change will be produced in the character of the neighborhood or a detriment to nearby properties will be created by the variance. My personal take is it looks nice there are a million car dealerships it's large but it is up there and I am not really sure it bothers me. I don't know how anybody else feels about that.

Mickey Zucker: I agree completely. I think that very frankly if you break it up into two buildings it will look worse. It is a very attractive building and beautifully landscaped.

Rich Stavridis: We pride ourselves into trying to make it look nice. You say you see a lot of car dealerships. We are not trying to be just another car dealership.

Karen Schleimer: I know that and I do get that sense. What I am saying is one of the things we have to consider is whether this will cause a problem in the neighborhood. My take is that it is not a problem.

Robert Marino: You are talking about a large lot size. You've got one-acre zoning. If you split the building into two buildings the determent is probably greater if they comply with the present zoning that by granting the variance. That is the key.

Karen Schleimer: So there is number one. What are the benefits sought by the applicant to be achieved by some other method other than the area variance? That is the question that is out there. So let's leave that aside for the moment. Whether their requested area variance is substantial. It is substantial, it is huge.

John Arons: You have to go beyond saying it is a big variance. There is more to that question.

Karen Schleimer: So what we were talking about is that this would be the size of the lot, and the fact that the same burden would be on someone with a lot.

John Arons: The extent of the variance in this case is no relationship to any negative impact of the extent. So if we were asking for 250 build or a 300 building it is going to have the same impacts base upon what you just said, no negative impact, no greater negative impact because it 336 instead of 236.

Sean Coughlin: But there is also currently a 220 foot building there.

Karen Schleimer: Whether the proposed variance will have an adverse effect or impact on the physical or environmental conditions in the neighborhood.

Mickey Zucker: I don't believe it will have anything adverse at all. Again I keep bouncing back to the fact if you take this building and cut it in half and have a one-foot empty space between the building I think we are just playing games. It doesn't make any difference.

Max Lippolis: Can you read that one again.

Karen Schleimer: Whether the proposed variance will have an adverse effect or impact on the physical or environmental conditions in the neighborhood.

Max Lippolis: The conditions in the neighborhood would it effect traffic. Would that be one of the components of the physical natures of the neighborhood? Would traffic be a component of that?

Karen Schleimer: Probably.

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