Portsmouth board allows new mobile home without city director's process

PORTSMOUTH — The city Zoning Board of Adjustment voted to allow the owner of a 1960s-era mobile home in the Oriental Gardens park to replace it with a new home without getting a variance.

The board’s vote came late Tuesday night, after city Planning Director Peter Britz recently declined to grant a building permit for the new mobile home.

Britz had also ruled the owner of the mobile home at 210 Oriental Gardens would need to get a variance from the board first, before replacing the existing home.

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John Kuzinevich, the attorney representing Salem Manufactured Homes LLC, the company seeking to sell the new home to the park resident, said the city “was on the losing side of all the common sense” when it initially required the variance for the new home.

“We thought it was totally uncalled for. The city was strictly but unreasonably trying to apply the ordinance,” Kuzinevich said Wednesday. “We think the Board of Adjustment reached a valid legal result, but one that was also marked with a sense of fairness and common sense.”

Kuzinevich pointed during Tuesday’s hearing to the impact Britz, the planning director, could have on affordable housing in the city by requiring variances when a newer mobile home replaces an older one.

“Affordable housing is important. If we have to go through variances for each unit, we will drive up the cost,” he said. “If through this appeal we get some clarity that goes forward, it will significantly save costs.”

Kuzinevich told the board the new mobile home was 600 square feet, and just 148 square feet larger than the previous one at the same location.

“We’re talking about a very tiny structure,” he said during the meeting.

The small increase in size of the mobile home itself will have “absolutely no impact on the mobile home park,” he said.

“Since there’s no change (to) the park, the park remains unaffected and there’s no expansion of use,” Kuzinevich told the board.

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Asked about the city’s decision to require the variance for a small mobile home in a city in the midst of a development boom, Kuzinevich said, “In the end I was not surprised.”

“I was puzzled at the beginning as the process started, but then it became clear to me the city was just trying to use the Zoning Board to somehow trigger a site plan review,” of the entire mobile home park, he said.

He said the city Planning Department has previously approved replacing two older homes at Oriental Gardens with new homes up to 25% larger.

“Here out of the blue there is a complete role reversal or a complete enforcement reversal,” he said.

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Britz also appeared at Tuesday night’s late meeting, to “explain my decision as an administrative official and director of planning and sustainability.”

Britz reminded the board the mobile home park is in the city’s office/research district, where “mobile homes are a prohibited use.” Because of that, he said, the mobile homes and the use represent “an unlawful pre-existing non-conforming use.”

“So those non-conforming uses may not be enlarged or extended, was my interpretation,” without a variance, he said.

He maintained the mobile homes are “essential components or elements of the park.”

“Therefore if the homes are expanded, the use is expanded,” Britz said.

“Just like if you had a non-conforming industrial building in a residential zone that wanted to expand, you’d need a variance,” Britz said.

He acknowledged the one home in question in this case “might not create a noticeable change, it isn’t a very big addition. But if it’s allowed, then there’s no stopping the next one, which could be bigger."

At times the Planning Department has allowed larger replacement mobile homes, but at other times they’ve required the owner get a variance first, he said.

“I think it would be nice to have consistency and I’d like to do that moving forward,” Britz added.

In response to a question, he said if the mobile home was in a park that was zoned correctly, it would not have to come before the board for a replacement home.

Board member David Rheaume called the debate “really a fairness issue here.”

“Anyone who now has a non-conforming use throughout the city now has all these additional concerns about their structure,” he said.

But board member Beth Margeson said she thought the issue was a simple one.

“It is non-conforming, anything that happens to it has to come to us for a variance,” she said.

The board ultimately voted to grant the appeal, which allows the mobile home owner to move forward to seek a building permit without a variance.

Rheaume voted to grant the appeal along with board members Paul Mannle, Thomas Rossi, Jeffrey Mattson and Jody Record.

Chair Phyllis Eldridge and Margeson voted against granting the appeal.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH board allows new mobile home at Oriental Gardens