11-23-09 Common Council Meeting Agenda & Packet

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Area Board of Zoning Appeals -September 2, 2009 house running there. I welcome anybody here to come see my home. I've restored it. It's beautiful. I planned on living in the home and I'm certainly not going to rent it to a bunch of animals that's going to tear it up. I mean, I can't speak for all of these other landlords but I know how I will tend to my property. I take a great deal of pride in it as did my grandparents when they lived there. As we said my father went to Notre Dame and rented a room there and met my mother. You know I'd like to find a nice group of people and rent to them. All I can do is promise you that I will keep up the property and if this ever does turn back to being single family homes, believe me I'll be the first one on board. In fact I would consider moving back. But as I said before we have lost the neighborhood and it's too late now. I've stuck it out. I've done my time. And I'd like to be let out of this now. I'm a hostage in the middle of all this. Thank you. MR. URBANSKI: I have to say this has been a meeting and a half. Not time wise but issues. Is there a motion? I truly hope we send it with some type of a recommendation other than no recommendation. I was really happy to see Nancy back there. I really mean that and look at her husband and the situation they are and I don't think that the situation that they are in right now and her husband's health but they're the only one in that neighborhood. I sympathize with the people on both sides, I really do. Not in my backyard. Do I want four houses around me, three houses or six houses on the street, seven houses. I wish our Councilman from the second district was still here. And I wish Ann was. Yeah they will have the final say on this. I'm the one who said a few minutes ago that as a Board we needed to act one way or the other. You know I don't know if I can right now. We are an appointed Board. They are an elected Council and am I trying to get out of it? Yes. And I hope everybody here understands my position. I guess I'll make a motion to send it with no recommendation. A motion to send the petition to the Common Council with No Recommendation is made by Mr. Urbanski and seconded~by Mr. Hawley. MR. PHIPPS: I guess my comment is that doing these lot by lot is unfortunately the wrong approach. But we certainly don't have the power to some say in the zoning to change this back into a traditional single family neighborhood that wasn't overrun by students. Unfortunately the zoning of the past has put us in the situation where a multitude of homes are occupied by many people and I'm sure that turns the neighborhood into someplace where you probably wouldn't want to live. To just give up and say the whole thing should be multi family and let it go would probably make some sense logically. But are still as we heard so people who are sticking it out and hoping for a change the other way. It may be idealistic and say yeah, we'll give an unfavorable recommendation for this but it's not going to change the situation. It may make more sense to actually zone a section and say well this is turned over essentially to a large numbers of Notre Dame students but that's not a choice we have. We have one recommendation on one small parcel and whatever we do seems a little illogical. MR. URBANSKI: Ms. Taylor you were involved with the City plan as much as I was, very much so. But even before the City plan about 10 or 12 years ago, a South Bend organization came to the City of South Bend and wanted to put in a University Village with South Bend is the only major university town that doesn't have one. And I don't know if you remember that company who's offices are on Main Street about a block away from us. Their idea was to convert everything back from the St. Joe River toward the university back to single family dwellings and no rentals at all. Do you remember that? And to build very expensive, $1,100 to $1,200 a month rentals by Notre Dame in the woods and they got turned down. And somebody from Indianapolis...I 44