Miller v. Zoning Bd. of Appeals of Town of Westport
| Decision Date | 20 September 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 12575,12575 |
| Citation | 647 A.2d 1050,36 Conn.App. 98 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Frank L. MILLER, III v. ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS OF THE TOWN OF WESTPORT. |
John F. Fallon, with whom was Matthew M. Hausman, Fairfield, for appellant (plaintiff).
Patricia E. Curtin, Bridgeport, for appellee (defendant).
Before EDWARD Y. O'CONNELL, FOTI and LAVERY, JJ.
The plaintiff appealed to the trial court from the denial by the Westport zoning board of appeals (board) of his request for a variance. On appeal to this court, the plaintiff claims that the trial court improperly found that the board had not abused its discretion in denying the variance. The dispositive issue is whether the board and the trial court correctly concluded that the plaintiff's property had merged with an adjoining property that the plaintiff once owned. We reverse the judgment. 1
The plaintiff owns an undeveloped lot at 5 Winding Lane in Westport. The plaintiff bought the property in 1980 from Buddy B., Inc. At the same time, the plaintiff bought an adjoining lot that had been conveyed with the first lot since 1965. The sole access to the plaintiff's property is a twenty-one foot wide right-of-way from the west side of Winding Lane, known as Winding Lane West, that also serves two lots to the north of the plaintiff's property. This right-of-way was first mapped when the plaintiff's property was conveyed in 1942. It was recorded on August 15, 1958. The plaintiff's property is located in an area zoned for residential use, in which lots are required to be no smaller than one acre and shaped so that a 150 foot square can be inscribed within the property. 2 The plaintiff's lot is one acre in area but is shaped in such a way that the largest square that can be inscribed on the property measures 144.47 feet.
In 1982, the plaintiff sold the adjoining lot and its residence to the Johnsons (Johnson lot). When the plaintiff attempted to sell the property in question in 1991, the Westport director of planning and zoning informed the prospective purchaser that the lot did not comply with the zoning regulations because it could not accommodate a 150 foot square. 3 The planning director also stated that the parcel was not in compliance with the right-of-way width requirements because more than one lot was being served by Winding Lane West. The sale was not completed.
The plaintiff then applied to the board for a variance of both the shape requirement and the access requirement. After a public hearing, the board denied the plaintiff's application because the board found that there was insufficient hardship and that any hardship that may have existed was self-created. The plaintiff appealed that decision to the Superior Court, which upheld the board's finding that the hardship was self-created. The trial court also found that the merger doctrine applied and that the plaintiff failed to prove that the board's denial effected an unconstitutional taking. This appeal followed.
The record reveals that the trial court and the board believed that the plaintiff's property had merged with the Johnson lot in 1956. The planning director based her opinion that the plaintiff's property was not a conforming lot, at least in part, on her belief that the two properties had merged. The transcript of the public hearing reveals that the board operated on the assumption that the two properties had merged. Finally, the trial court specifically found that merger had occurred and based its analysis of hardship on that belief.
Building lots in Westport must be no smaller than one acre, and must be shaped in such a way that a square with 150 foot sides could be drawn within some portion of the property. The record reveals that the plaintiff's property satisfies the size requirement, but fails to satisfy the shape requirement. The largest square that could be inscribed within the plaintiff's property measures 144.47 feet per side. Thus, the plaintiff's property is nonconforming.
Merger in Westport is governed by § 6-3.2 of the Zoning Regulations. That section provides that adjoining lots merge if (1) they were owned by the same person on or after March 24, 1952, (2) one or both lots are undeveloped, (3) one or both lots do not conform to the area and shape requirements of the zoning regulations, and (4) if "taken together [the resulting combined lot] would ... more nearly [meet] the requirements of [the] regulations with regard to lot ... shape...." 4 The plaintiff's property was owned by the owner of the Johnson lot on March 24, 1956. It remains undeveloped, and fails to conform with the shape requirements of the zoning regulations. Thus, the trial court concluded that the plaintiff's property satisfied the first three requirements for merger.
The board appears to have assumed that the plaintiff's property also satisfied the fourth requirement; the trial court explicitly found so. The trial court based its ruling on the fact that if the two properties were considered together, two 150 foot sides of a "square" could be inscribed in the lot. The trial court appears to have believed that a "square" with two 150 foot sides and other shorter sides more nearly approximates a 150 foot square. The trial court concluded that the result of combining the plaintiff's property and the Johnson lot would more nearly conform to the shape requirement. Therefore, the merger provision was invoked and the two properties merged.
Our review of the record and the applicable regulations, however, convinces us that the two properties never merged, thus undermining the basis for the trial court's hardship analysis. In order for the merger provision to apply, the result of the combined lots must "more nearly" permit a 150 foot square to be inscribed within it. In considering whether the combination of the plaintiff's property and the Johnson lot would more nearly conform to that regulation, we must interpret the 150 foot square requirement. We interpret and construe local ordinances according to the principles of statutory construction. Czajkowski v. Planning & Zoning Board, 14 Conn.App. 283, 288, 540 A.2d 716 (1988). We construe words and phrases according to the commonly approved usage of the language. General Statutes § 1-1(a). Where an ordinance does not define a term, we look to the common understanding expressed in dictionaries. See Southington v. State Board of Labor Relations, 210 Conn. 549, 561, 556 A.2d 166 (1989).
A square is defined as "a rectangle with all four sides equal." Webster's Third New International Dictionary. A rectangle is defined as "a parallelogram all of whose angles are right angles." Id. A parallelogram is defined as "a quadrilateral with opposite sides parallel." Id. Finally, a quadrilateral is defined as "a plane figure of four sides and consequently four angles." Id. These definitions lead us to the following conclusion: a square is a plane figure of four equal sides and four right angles.
Thus, the combination of the plaintiff's property and the Johnson lot would invoke the merger provision if the resulting combined lot could accommodate a figure of four sides and four right angles larger than 144.47 feet. The trial court ruled that a figure with two 150 foot sides more nearly conformed to the requirement of four 150 foot sides with right angles. We do not agree. What the trial court actually described is a hexagon 5 with two sides 150 feet long, one side 144.47 feet long, and three shorter sides. We conclude that a hexagon that encompasses more area than a square does not more nearly conform to a regulation that requires a square. The regulation at issue does not merely concern size; lots must be at least one acre and shaped a certain way. A five acre lot would satisfy the size requirement but would still not comply with the shape requirement if it was not wider than 149 feet.
There was no evidence in the record before the trial court, nor any evidence before the board, that the combination of the plaintiff's property and the Johnson lot could accommodate a square larger than 144.47 feet. Because a combination of the plaintiff's property and the Johnson lot would not have conformed more nearly to the square requirement, the merger provision was never invoked.
The defendant argues for the first time on appeal that the combination of the plaintiff's lot and the Johnson lot did more nearly conform to the square requirement because a square with 149 foot sides can...
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