Kings Crossing Shopping Center and Zoning Variances

Fairfield’s new shopping center that once was the site of the Handy and Harman sits on Kings Highway's intersection with Grasmere Avenue. It is now the home of a Whole Foods and Fairfield’s fourth CVS. However, the new businesses planning to enter the center do not stop there.

Five Guys burger restaurant will likely be the next business to enter the Kings Crossing shopping center. Five Guy’s first attempt for approval was denied by the Town Planning and Zoning Commission (TPZ).  TPZ held that the restaurant was 12 parking spaces short of the number set by the town parking regulations. After being denied the application for a certificate of conformance by TPZ, attorney for the developer, William Fitzpatrick III took the application to the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) and received a waiver for the 12 parking spaces. In his appeal Fitzpatrick argued the developer was entitled to a credit for parking spaces lost because of a shared driveway created with Home Depot (the adjoining property). ZBA granted the variance allowing for a resubmission to TPZ for the Certificate of Conformance and was unanimously approved.

In short, a variance is a deviation from the set of rules a municipality applies to land use and land development, typically a zoning ordinance, building or municipal code. There are two types of variances area and use. An area variance is the most common type. It can be requested by a builder or landowner when an odd configuration of the land, or sometimes the physical improvements (structures) on the land, requires a relaxation of the applicable regulations to avoid denying the landowner the same rights and use of the property as neighboring properties enjoy. A use variance as is the case here is a variance that authorizes a land use not normally permitted by the zoning ordinance. Variance requests are justified only if special conditions exist on the lot that create a hardship making it too difficult to comply with the code's normal requirements. Most likely it was justified in the Five Guys case because the when the shopping center was redesigned to include a shared driveway with Home Depot they lost about 75 parking spaces. There in lies the hardship.