As expected, St. Louis County planning officials are recommending approval of a variance request that could clear the way for construction of a new K-12 school in Field Township, about five miles north of Cook.

Field Township officials strongly oppose the variance, but township officials were not able to persuade members of the county’s planning commission to deny a conditional use permit for the project back in November.

This time, the matter goes before the county’s Board of Adjustment on Tuesday, Jan. 18, in the Liz Prebich Conference Room at the Northland Office Building in Virginia. The public hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.

County planning staff are recommending approval of the variance, even though the proposed project would cover 14.1 percent of the lot in impervious surface, in a zone that allows just two percent. The Board of Adjustment previously denied a variance request for a nearly identical school project in the south half of the county, where the lot coverage limit was ten percent rather than the two percent coverage allowed in the north. But some of the board members who voted in that case are not expected to attend Tuesday’s meeting, which could well affect the outcome.

School district officials and project managers are so confident they have the votes for approval this time around that they have already advertised for bids on the north school project.

Township officials remain optimistic that the variance will be denied. “At 14.1 percent, they’re at seven times the permitted surface coverage,” noted Keith Aho, chair of the Field Town Board. Rejection of the variance request could well put an end to the school district’s quest to build a new school at the site in Field Township.

In recommending approval, county staff state that the school’s stormwater management system “is designed to handle the runoff at full build out” and that possible alternatives would not change that. The staff acknowledges that the proposed school complex would change the character of the neighborhood, which is currently rural agricultural and forest land, but the fact that some of the land in the parcel will not be developed should mitigate the effects.

But others aren’t so sure. Aho noted that the approval of a school could restrict the ability of other landowners to obtain approval for uses typical in the Forest and Agricultural Management district. Those uses could include feedlots, slaughterhouses, or landfills, uses that would likely raise objections from the school district if proposed by neighbors of the planned school. Odors from such operations are considered consistent with rural activities, but would likely conflict with a high-density development nearby.

The biggest legal hurdle for the variance could well be the fact that the need for the variance appears to have been self-imposed. State law and county ordinance generally disallows the granting of variances in cases where the property owner’s need is self-imposed, rather than a result of a unique limitation or special condition of the parcel in question.

“There are no special conditions and there is nothing unique to the property as it relates to lot coverage,” stated Tower-area resident Steve Lotz, in written comments submitted to the county. “Further, when the applicant acquired the property the applicant knew or should have known that the proposed use would not meet the two percent maximum lot coverage limit and thus the lot coverage difficulty was created by the applicant through the act of obtaining this parcel for this project,” Lotz continued.

County planner Mark Lindhorst stated in the staff report that the “practical difficulty occurred when the parcel was created,” but he does not explain who created the parcel. He noted that the location was determined by a planning process that involved consideration of a number of sites. “The current location was approved by the school board,” he stated.