01-26-09 Common Council Meeting Agenda & Packet

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Board of Zoning Appeals -January 15, 2009 MICHAEL BAXTER, MARGARET PFEIL, AND CHARLES WILBER ON BEHALF OF OUR LADY OF THE ROAD The petition of Michael Baxter, Margaret Pfeil, and Charles Wilber, on behalf of Our Lady of the Road seeking a special exception to allow a group residence, for weather related emergency on property at 744 S. Main Street. This property is zoned LI pending rezoning to MU. MR. MICHAEL BAXTER: I reside at S15.S. St. Joseph St., South Bend, and I am one of the three board members for Our Lady of the Road, and Margaret Pfeil and Charles Wilber are also present to answer any questions that might arise. They are the other two board members. We started Our Lady of the Road in December of 2006 and we originally opened up our services to people who came to Our Lady of the Road during the day time. Our idea was to provide simple services to people in form of coffee, showers, laundry and so on. In the past two years the ministry has grown so that now about 50 to 100 people throughout the year come in any given day. We are open three days a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. When we did the architectural design for the building we asked John Werntz our architect to design it in such a way that if there were ever a need and we were called upon that we would be able to provide some overnight stay as well. But we never perused that but we did think in our minds that this need might arise. Well it so happens that early this fall, mid fall I would say, several of the other social agencies operating downtown serving the homeless did turn to us specially for the weather amnesty program where by people are allowed to come in out of the cold for overnight stay on a very simple basis. Come in the evening and leave in the morning on the cold nights. The social agencies downtown including the Center for the Homeless, Hope Ministries, Life Treatment Center and other agencies have been providing this. There was a change in the capacity at Hope Ministries so that they we able to take 10 instead of the usual 20 people a night. And people having done a count of the downtown area thought that there might be a need based on their counting based on the down turn of the economy and for the bad forecast for the winter which has materialized before our eyes. So we are coming to this Board seeking a Special Exception to a prospective rezoning from LI to Mixed Use. The Special Exception allowing people to stay on an overnight basis at Our Lady of the Road. I laid out in the justification in some detail the questions and the answers that we have as to the four criteria which are relative to this application. Basically we think that it is not injurious but in fact good for the community to betaking in people who are on the streets, especially on the coldest of nights for overnight stay. We believe that it doesn't have a deleterious effect on the district because this type of service is provided to adjacent, by services who are housing adjacent properties. This service will not require us to change the structure of the building or property in any way except to improve it by probably installing outdoor lights and just generally having people at that site at night will have a positive effect on the patterns of the people during the night time hours. So we feel like this is very fitting to what we've been doing and it's fitting to what other agencies that are located nearby are doing as well. I can keep it as simple as that. MS. WILDER-HAMILTON: Will the facility available over the weekend or open Friday, Saturday and Sunday? _ MR. BAXTER: Yes. We would like to have people stay overnight on any cold night where there's a real need. A lot of people stay outside and they tucker through a lot of difficult weather but when the weather gets really cold, even the hardiest of souls look for a place in weather amnesty so. MS. WILDER-HAMILTON: What degree is considered. severe cold? 4