Construction woes aired

SALEMBURG — A local resident in the process of updating her house to support the needs of her disabled husband, had to halt construction after the initial construction plans came into conflict with a town zoning ordinance.

At Thursday night’s board meeting, Ronda Carter came before town officials to discuss revamping her century-old home on Church Street. The purpose was to improve the home with accessibility features to aid her sick husband, who suffers from dementia and is wheelchair bound.

Presenting the proposal with her that night was Kelly Stanley, who’s heading the desired custom home build for Carter, where he broke down the details of the planned construction.

“I met Mrs. Carter and her husband, who has three Purple Hearts, a year ago,” Stanley said. “She told me then that she needed some things since he’s in a wheelchair. He’s a big man, and their bathroom is not big enough to do what they need to do, and they have to have a lot of things. The house, right now, is not suited for his needs.

“Our plan was to spend a number of dollars in hopes to make that feasible,” he continued. “I asked Mrs. Carter probably three months ago if she’d be OK, because it’d be cheaper, if we tore the house down and build another one exactly like it, on the same footprint where the current one sits, and they agreed. We started going through all the numbers and came to get zoning, when this nice lady told me, we have to tear everything there down. We’re trying not to do that because they have buildings and a trailer that has all their paraphernalia and their keepsakes inside them.”

The lady he referred to was town clerk Teresa Smith, who noted the issue with Stanley’s plan of a rebuild went against the town’s zoning ordinance.

“Her house, at first it was going to be torn down, and they were going to rebuild it,” she said. “The problem here is if they tear that house down, then the lot has to become conforming. It then has to go before our zoning board and that house would have to be put 40 foot back. It would have to be 20 foot off of one side, 10 foot off on another side and 20 foot in the back.

“So, inside the big square that is the lot, the house can be built anywhere inside that space,” she added. “If they don’t tear it down and remodel it, they can do construction right there where it sits. That said, the minute that it’s taken down, our ordinance says it would be like building a brand-new house on a vacant lot.”

Those facets sparked ongoing conversations that went on for over half an hour between both parties. In those discussions was an abundance of ideas bounced around on ways to make the plan work within the ordinance guidelines. But before that, Stanley laid out his initial proposal for how they planned to move forward.

“My proposal is, if you look at the floor plan, they wanted the exact same house on the exact same footprint,” he said. “If you look at the existing footprint, we would come in two feet to the left, so that the new footprint would actually be a little bit smaller. The reason we would do that is the porch, right now, is 10 feet, the one in front is eight feet. And so, whenever we start running our diagonal floors and diagonal ceilings, the cuts won’t line up unless they’re the same, so we want to move that in. Plus, they only have one bathroom, so we propose to add a bathroom, taking the footprint of what was the existing porch on one side, and put it there.

”The only thing we would add new to the existing house, that’s nonexistent right now, would be a room he needs,” Stanley added. “He’s got three different wheelchairs and walkers that need to be plugged in, we would plug them in there. There’s a two-foot offset in the corner of the existing home. We would take that corner and square it off so we can have enough room for that bathroom, which is required to have a five-foot radius. And the vanity has to have access so his wheelchair can go up under it. We’re just trying to build a new house in the exact same footprint of this house, and it’s the same house, except for a few of those items I just told you about.”

Even with detailed plans, Smith reiterated that their ordinance does not allow for the structure to be torn down without meeting the standards of that ordinance.

“The only thing that our zoning has the issue with is adding on that back corner he mentioned,” she said. “It has to be in the same footprint, that’s just how our ordinance reads. Or, it has to be brought up to code, which would be tearing it down, moving it to where it meets all of the setbacks and then only two accessory structures will be allowed on the property, so some of their storage building would not be able to stay.”

Ultimately, the issue was tabled to be revisited at the next meeting.

“I feel so blessed just to still have him,” Carter said. “We’re in Fayetteville now and he’s not happy, I can tell you that right now. I thought this was all a go. All my personal belongings, everything is packed, and then we ran into this. I just need this to get started and get this over with for us, because it’s been going on for almost three years now.”