Planners Give Cottage Application a ZBA Detour

Referring a couple to the zoning board of appeals Tuesday, the planning board denied for now their application for a cottage-related special-use permit.

Longtime Bedford residents Tom and Sue McCrosson, looking to downsize, have agreed to buy a century-old cottage and its surrounding four acres on West Patent Road. Their plan is to build a new three- or four-bedroom home totaling some 3,300 square feet to serve as the main residence. They would hang on to the cottage as an accessory structure.

“This is a particularly difficult one,” said planning board Chair Deirdre Courtney-Batson. While the cottage impressed board members when they made a site visit, she said, “there are two aspects of the code you don’t abide by.”

For starters, the cottage fails to meet current setback requirements and its 1,284 square feet of floor area far exceeds today’s cottage limit of 800 square feet. Since the structure, built circa 1910, predates zoning itself, those shortcomings could presumably be written of as existing nonconforming conditions. But by building a new residence “in a sense you’re changing the use of the house,” Courtney-Batson said. That would intensify the nonconformity, requiring zoning board intervention.

Unlike the planning board, which is charged with enforcing the town’s land-use decrees, the zoning board is empowered to bend the rules—within limits and under strictly defined circumstances—to avoid visiting unnecessary hardship on a property owner.