Battle over facility is taken to court

The company also filed an earlier lawsuit against the township.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HUBBARD -- A request to open a "store and forward" facility on Drummond Avenue property has landed in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Trans Rail America Inc., listing an address on Chestnut Ridge Road, called a recent decision by the township board of zoning appeals to deny its request to open the facility "illegal, unreasonable, arbitrary, unconstitutional, capricious and unsupported by the preponderance of substantial, reliable and probative evidence."
Trans Rail is asking the court to overturn the decision. The appeal was filed Thursday.
Trans Rail made a request to use part of its property on Drummond Avenue as a temporary storage facility, with materials being held on the ground in rail cars and large containers. The items would sit on the property a short while then be moved elsewhere.
Zoning Administrator John Pieton said the Trans Rail property in question is in an area zoned light industrial, and would need to be in an area zoned heavy industrial. He said the permit was denied on that basis.
Trans Rail's argument
In an appeal to the zoning board of appeals, Atty. Christopher Gibbon, representing Trans Rail, said the property was deemed industrial by township trustees in 1954, then unofficially reclassified to light industrial in 1983. He said the light classification should not apply.
Members of the board of appeals voted unanimously to deny the request.
Jeffrey Rowlands, appeals board chairman, said the 1983 resolution to change the zoning was adopted with all legislative procedures followed accurately. He said there may have been some administrative errors but not enough to negate the change in zoning.
Rowlands said there was a two-year window to challenge the 1983 change, but that window of opportunity closed long ago.
Previous company
According to board members, another company occupied the land in question at the time of the zone change. That company, they said, used the land to cut up and burn old rail cars -- a use not allowed under the new zoning. It operated as nonconforming use, because it had been operating at the time of the zoning change.
According to the board, the former tenant ceased operation no later than 1997. After two years of no activity under the nonconforming use, the property automatically falls under the more current zoning. Rowlands said Trans Rail bought the property in 2003 -- long after it was considered to fall under the updated zoning regulations.
Board members said Trans Rail would still have been denied if the property had been bought in the two years after the former company stopped its conditional use, because zoning laws do not permit a continued conditional use of property if the use is changed.
Trans Rail had been attempting to place a landfill on part of the Drummond Avenue property. The company filed a lawsuit in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in 2004 against the township over zoning issues at the proposed landfill site. That lawsuit is still working its way through the courts.
jgoodwin@vindy.com