Turek v. Zoning Board of Appeals

Citations

• 196 Conn. App. 122

Syllabus

The defendant zoning board of appeals appealed from the judgment of the trial court sustaining the appeal filed by the plaintiff landowners. After a hurricane destroyed their home, the plaintiffs sought to construct a new home on their property. The plaintiffs filed an application for a variance from the building height requirements of certain zoning regula- tions. The board denied the application, and the plaintiffs appealed to the trial court, alleging that the board acted illegally, arbitrarily and in abuse of its discretion by ignoring certain legal hardships unique to the property. The trial court sustained the plaintiffs' appeal, concluding that the plaintiffs demonstrated an unusual hardship on the basis of the destruction of their previous home and the need to comply with applica- ble federal and state flood elevation requirements, and that their pro- posal qualified under the narrow exception to the hardship requirement set forth in Adolphson v. Zoning Board of Appeals (205 Conn. 703), because the proposed house would reduce nonconformities in relation to the previous house. Thereafter, this court granted the board's petition for certification to appeal to this court, and this appeal followed. Held: 1. The trial court incorrectly concluded that the plaintiffs demonstrated a legally cognizable hardship: an applicant for a variance must show that, because of some peculiar characteristic of his property, a strict applica- tion of the zoning regulation would produce an undue hardship, and the plaintiffs here failed to carry their burden of demonstrating a legally cognizable harship as the record of the proceedings before the board contained no evidence of hardship originating in the zoning ordinance because the evidence merely established that the plaintiffs could not, in the absence of a variance, build the type of house that they desired while conforming to flood elevation requirements; although the plain- tiffs' proposed home did not increase substantially t