Variance Properly Granted/Review Criteria Explained

The Second Department, after noting that an application for a variance can be made by an agent for the property owner, determined the Board of Zoning Appeals had properly granted the lot-width variances.  In explaining the court’s role in reviewing variances, the court wrote:

…”[L]ocal zoning boards are vested with broad discretion in considering applications for area variances, and [c]ourts may set aside a zoning board determination only where the record reveals that the board acted illegally or arbitrarily, or abused its discretion, or that it merely succumbed to generalized community pressure'” … . A variance determination of a zoning board should be sustained if it has a rational basis and is not arbitrary and capricious … .

Here, the Board properly balanced the requisite statutory factors, and its determination that the benefit to the applicant of the requested variances outweighed the detriment to the health, safety, and welfare of the neighborhood or community had a rational basis and was not arbitrary and capricious (see Town Law § 267-b[3][b]…). Among other things, the Board found that, despite a few wide lots in the vicinity of the premises, the majority of lots in the uninterrupted two-block segment of Bayview Avenue in which the subject premises were located had a width of 50 feet or less, and, thus, that the variances would not produce an undesirable change in the character of the neighborhood or a detriment to nearby properties. Matter of Huszar v Bayview Park Props LLC, 2013 NY Slip Op 05906, 2nd Dept 9-18-13