09/23/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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~~ ,~ ~. Regular Council Meeting 9-23-02 Page 3 what it's like having a liquor place next to you on a Saturday afternoon that sells hard liquor, and I don't mean beer, not a beverage store, a liquor joint. On Christmas, it's a nightmare. I think the Council people should visit around a liquor place and get an opinion of the other businessmen. Council President Buckholtz said that is an excellent suggestion and I for one will take you up on that. That will be the kind of opinions that we can share at that meeting. Mar~Anne Humme116674 Seneca: Have they actually purchased this property? As of July, it transferred to another name. Council President Buckholtz said I will defer on that. Mayor Rinker said I don't know the answer to that. What I suspect is typically what will happen is people who are purchasing property will have an option and that's really a contract between the seller of the property and the purchaser. Our understanding is that the people who are presenting this request, the Steigerwald's, do have legal standing to make the request for the approvals that they seek. We understand that monies have exchanged hands. They are paying for the right to be able to come in and say that this is the use that they are proposing to develop a site for. For example, the investment that they have to make in this is going to be about $1,000,000.00 worth of improvements for tearing down two structures and building a new one. I don't know exactly the status. It's something we certainly would confirm. Our basic understanding is that they are under an option agreement which gives them under the Law the opportunity to make the request. Unless you saw the title transfer, I'm assuming that they do not own the property out right in fee. Two things that I want to say is, and then I think the Law Director can also enlighten everyone, because I think that you are all here for the reason. (1) Bear in mind that the property is zoned for certain types of commercial uses. The request that the Steigerwald's are making to the Village is not permission whether they can use the property as a liquor store. The nature of the use under our Zoning Code by definition is a permitted use. The request, the permissions that they are seeking are what are known as area variances, that's what they are in front of the Board of Zoning Appeals for. This deals with such things as setbacks, the amount of parking and so on. So it's not whether they can use the site for that use, it's how they go about doing it. Of course, that is critically important. (2) Our understanding is that there have been questions raised as to whether the permit itself, the liquor permit is appropriately transferable to that site specifically. I think the question is whether or not it's too close to the Church. That is something that we have asked the Law Director to look into. He can report on that at least as to where we are preliminarily. We understand that we have certain procedural rights that we can pursue. I think Council is going to be asked tonight to give an approval to the Law Director to do so. In a nutshell, liquor control issues are controlled by the State of