Variance could save 100-year-old house in Rehoboth

The Rehoboth Beach Board of Adjustment has granted a variance that could lead to the preservation of a nearly 100-year-old hunting lodge on the portion of Park Avenue that’s still a dirt road.

During a hearing March 28, the board unanimously approved a request by the owners of the property at 40 Park Ave. to encroach less than 1 foot into a side-yard setback.

Representing brother and sister Mark Chandler Wagner and Katherine Wagner Palmer, attorney Vince Robertson said the property is currently a 100-by-100-foot lot. They want to rotate the house 90 degrees and subdivide the lot into two 50-by-100-foot lots, he said.

The resulting rotation would put the western edge of the house 0.7 feet into a side-yard setback, which happens to be the one shared by the siblings, said Robertson, adding the request will also preserve most of the old trees on the property. Denial of the variance request would lead to demolition of the house, because the lot would be split and two houses maximizing the floor-to-area ratio would be built in its place, he said.

The house was constructed in 1926 and used as a hunting lodge by the original owner until it was purchased by the Wagner family more than 50 years ago, said Robertson. 

Board member Bill Perlstein said he was moved by the fact that the house is an old structure. If it were new construction, he would feel different, he said.

While it appears the historic house will be saved, the future of a shed on the property is unclear. 

As part of an onsite inspection, Building Inspector Matt Janis noticed a shower and hot water had been installed, which was not recognized as having been approved in any city documents. As a result, he determined the shed’s use had been substantially modified without a permit. Janis said if the property owners removed the shower and hot water heater, the shed could exist as legally nonconforming.

Robertson argued the family had been using the shower and hot water heater since at least the 1970s and guessed it had actually been installed when the structure was built 100 years ago. The shower head is from the Henlopen Hotel from when it was renovated decades ago and the Wagners bought it at a yard sale, he said.

The owners went two routes to try to save the structure, but both were denied. First, they requested a side-yard setback variance to allow it to stay where it is, but the board denied that request because once the lot is partitioned, the structure would have to be made code compliant. The second attempt was to appeal Janis’ determination that the structure has been substantially modified. That was also denied.

Following the board’s vote, board attorney Fred Townsend said nothing the board did prevents the owners from following through with Janis saying the structure could stay as legally nonconforming if the shower and hot water heater are removed.

Belhaven Hotel variance extension granted

Prior to the hearing for 40 Park Ave., the board unanimously granted a 90-day extension to the variance it approved for the proposed Belhaven Hotel. The board granted a request to allow the hotel developers to increase the floor-to-area ratio from the code-mandated 2 to 3. It was set to expire at the end of April.

The planning commission is expected to begin the site-plan review of the proposed hotel during its meeting Friday, April 14. As proposed, the hotel would be a four-story, 115,000-square-foot structure that includes ground-floor retail, underground parking and more than 110 rooms. The project site has an address of 2 Rehoboth Ave., but it stretches the width of the block south to Wilmington Avenue and also fronts the Boardwalk.

111 Park Ave. variance granted

Another house on Park Avenue was granted a variance during the meeting. The owner at 111 Park Ave. requested a setback variance that would allow them to increase by 16 inches a portion of an existing nonconforming entryway that’s located within a front-yard setback. The board unanimously approved the request.

This was the second phase of this request; city commissioners granted the encroachment during a meeting in January. The footprint of the entranceway had already existed and encroached on city property. As approved by the commissioners, the annual fee for the encroachment increased from $10 to $30.