The intent of the Office Residential (OR) District is to allow
for limited, small-scale office and nonresidential uses within a historically
residential section of Main Street. The regulations herein are intended
to:
A. Permit low-impact, small-scale and owner-occupied professional and
business offices and a small variety of other low-impact nonresidential
uses within existing residential buildings.
B. Encourage the continued use of existing buildings, which were originally
constructed as residences, and discourage the demolition of such.
C. Encourage the preservation of the residential character of the district.
D. Limit the impact of nonresidential development on existing residences
by requiring a residential character, limiting the scale of buildings,
controlling the location of parking areas, and requiring buffer landscaping.
A building may be erected, altered or used, and a lot may be
occupied or used, in whole or in part, for any of the uses indicated
in the Appendix A, Permitted Use Matrix, and no other, provided that such uses shall comply with the district regulations established in this article, Article
IV, Use Regulations (in the event of a conflict between district and use regulations, the more stringent regulation shall be applicable), and all other applicable sections of this chapter.
The Zoning Hearing Board shall not grant approval of any use
requiring approval of a special exception until compliance with the
following standards and criteria are met:
A. Any use permitted by special exception in the Office Residential
(OR) district shall be considered accessory use as defined by this
chapter and, as such, shall be clearly incidental and secondary to
the use of the property as a single-family residence. No use permitted
by special exception may be established as the sole or principal use
of a lot in the Office Residential (OR) district .
B. The use must preserve, utilize, and maintain any existing principal
building.
C. Existing buildings may be expanded by no more than 25% of the building
footprint that existed at the time of passage of this chapter. All
additions must be designed to match the residential character of the
existing building and district and, in order to ensure this, must
meet the following design requirements:
(1) Building additions shall only be constructed to the rear or side
of existing principal buildings.
(2) The building material and colors of building additions shall be made
to match or complement the existing principal building.
(3) A wall to window/door opening ratio that is between 1:1 and 2:1 shall
be required.
(4) All roofs on additions shall have a pitch of at least six vertical
inches to every 12 horizontal inches. Dormers or gables may be used
to break up the bulk of roofs.
D. The hours of operation, hours of dropoff/pickup of clients or their
belongings, and times of delivery to/from the premises shall be limited
to the hours between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.
E. No exterior storage of any materials shall occur.
F. No goods or merchandise of any kind shall be sold or publicly displayed
upon the premises.
G. The storage of stock-in-trade and the sale of commodities of merchandise
on the premises is prohibited, except for those produced upon the
premises.
H. The occupation shall not create noise, fumes, odor, dust, electrical
interference or other emanation of any kind which may be detected
outside of the dwelling unit containing the use.
I. No mechanical equipment other than equipment normally intended for
domestic, household or small office use shall be permitted.
J. When a use requiring a special exception abuts a property solely
occupied by a residential use, a screen buffer with a minimum width
of 10 feet shall be provided along any shared property boundaries.
Lighting shall not shine on abutting residential properties,
and lighting poles shall not exceed 12 feet in height. Nonresidential
light fixtures shall be setback a minimum of 20 feet from residential
property lines, and the light source itself shall not be visible from
abutting residential properties.