There was no talk of controlling traffic, limiting crowd sizes, or banning soccer games.
Instead, with no debate the Board of Zoning Appeals simply voted a “unanimous” yes in favor of letting a small crew of coaches and student athletes practice and compete in an industrial warehouse rented out by 50 Latino and Hispanic parents. (Read about that project in detail here.)
That vote at an online meeting Tuesday night followed a meeting a week earlier where the City Plan Commission spent an hour debating how to make sure a proposal to train groups of 12 kids at a time inside 90 River St., a vacant building that can hold up to 600 people, didn’t turn into hundreds of players and spectators. That conversation took place in response to a request by the applicants to allow zero on-site parking where 163 spaces would typically be required, given ample parking in the surrounding vicinity. Read about that debate here, which prompted a suggestion from the commission that the BZA permit no parking so long as the site’s maximum occupancy is restricted to 200 people.
The BZA Commissioners ended up not adding that requirement. It permitted that zoning relief no questions asked — no conditions attached.