Zoning for 'store-send' site denied

Officials said current zoning regulations do apply to the property.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HUBBARD -- Members of the zoning appeals board unanimously denied a request by representatives of Trans Rail America Inc. to place a "store-and-send" facility on the company's Drummond Avenue property.
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 is in an area zoned light industrial, but it would need to be in an area zoned heavy industrial. He said the permit was denied on that basis.
In an appeal to the zoning board of appeals, Atty. Christopher Gibbon, representing Trans Rail, said the property was deemed industrial by trustees in 1954, then unofficially reclassified to light industrial in 1983. He said the light classification should not apply.
Members of the appeals board disagree.
Procedures followed
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.
"Everything that I have found showed the procedures were followed accurately," he said.
Rowlands said there was a two-year window to challenge the change starting at its adoption in 1983, but that window of opportunity closed decades ago.
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 railcars -- a use not allowed under the new zoning. The former company, since it was operating at the time of the change in zoning, operated as nonconforming use.
Updated zoning
According to the board, the former company 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.
Many in the township expressed concern that the store-and-send operation would have been the gateway to a landfill on the same property. A decision on zoning matters concerning the landfill is pending in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Rowlands said the decision by the board of appeals could also be contested in court.
Rick Hernandez of Hubbard Environmental and Land Preservation, the group opposed to the landfill's opening, thinks court is exactly where the issue is headed.
"I think the board made the right decision, but I don't think Trans Rail will see this as a done deal. They will come with an appeal," he said.
Hernandez said other communities, particularly those with pending landfills, need to carefully watch the outcome of the Trans Rail situation.
A Trans Rail official has said the company is a Maryland corporation.