The Legal Battle

I will do my best to keep this portion of the story brief, but no promises.

*September 2005*
After working out a price with the sellers of the property, my mom and I went to the zoning board and scheduled a time a month from then to come in and present my case to the Zoning Board. Prior to this hearing, a notice must be placed on the property to inform neighbors that the owner of the property is requesting a variance from the zoning code. This allows neighbors to attend the hearing and object to changes that they may think will negatively impact them.

*October 2005*
3 women from the neighborhood showed up at the hearing to object to my proposed plans. The unfortunate thing about this was that going into the hearing they knew nothing about my plans, nor did they pay attention at the hearing when my mom was going over the plans we'd come up with. My intention was to create a place for myself to live while at the same time rehabilitate an under-used piece of property. Instead, I was vilified to be an absentee landlord trying to make a quick buck by creating rental property on the Southside bandwagon. Considering some of the other crappy housing in the area, I can understand why they might have had reservations initially. However, after seeing that I was working on the project with my mother and listening to my reasons and visions for doing it, they still blindly objected, leaving my extremely frustrated.

The Zoning Board agreed and sympathized with me and after a couple of weeks I got notice that my request for a variance had been approved. At this point I began the various inspections which are customary before closing a real estate deal like radon, pest, building, etc. Everything seemed to be in order so in early December I set the date to make the actual purchase of 7 Uxor Way....

*December 2005*
Two days before this day came, I received notice in the mail that one of the neighbors who attended the hearing and her husband (a lawyer (!!)) were appealing the Zoning Board's decision. Should they win this case, I would no longer be allowed to build the 2nd floor addition. I immediately called off the closing and requested an extension of the sales agreement. After hours and hours of phone calls to city offices I determined that this process could take months and that indeed, if I started construction and the neighbors won their case, I would have to tear down the new construction.

My mom and I went back to the drawing board, trying to figure out a way to do the project as a one-story structure. In the end we did come up with a plan, but it was limited in many ways. Time was progressing and I needed to figure out whether I should go forward and risk purchasing the garage or let the neighbors win. After being advised by persons familiar with similar cases that the neighbors had little chance of overturning the Zoning Board's decision, I decided to go for it. Worst case scenario being that I would not be allowed to build anything and would have to re-sell it without altering it.

*August 2006*
9.5 months and a couple thousand dollars later the "few month" legal process was complete and the judge declined the neighbors' appeal, clearly stating that not only were their reasons for appeal not valid, but that there was precedence in previous state supreme court cases which stated that I didn't even need to get a variance to build vertically on an existing wall structure anyways! *sigh* oh well... it was an interesting process none-the-less. I could go into obscene amounts of detail about how I chose to go about defending myself in the court process and the reasons why their case was most likely just BS scare tactics, but at this point, it's time to get to the reason this blog was created: to keep a running log of the project itself and so people can track what's been going on. Although I'm still not "up to date", I promise that the next entry will have some real info on the garage (including pictures, w00t!) and what's being done to it. Till then... my bed awaits.