Canonsburg council approves zoning variance for stadium parking
Canonsburg Borough Council unanimously approved a zoning variance Monday night for the Canon-McMillan Memorial Stadium project, which doesn’t meet zoning codes for the number of parking spaces.
“There just isn’t enough land to provide more spaces by the stadium,” said borough solicitor Jeff Derrico.
It was the second time the district was approved for a zoning variance for this project. A variance was approved last August, but when bids for the project came back too high, the district made changes to the project and had to reapply for the variance.
The district’s assistant superintendent Scott Chambers said the initial bids came back at $8.3 million, and the budget was $7.3 million. He said the district made cuts to the project to save money.
The variance application had to be submitted to the borough’s zoning office because its 225 total parking spaces does not meet zoning codes. The application specified 133 paved car spaces, 61 lawn spaces and 14 paved spaces for buses in phase one, with 17 paved car spaces in phase two of the project, according to Troy Lucas, Canonsburg zoning and code enforcement officer.
He said with the new capacity of the stadium, the district would need 1,171 spaces to meet the code’s required “one space for every three seats.”
Chambers said the district would never be able to meet the zoning code where the stadium sits now and that it doesn’t want to have to move the stadium out of the borough. He also said the district’s plan for parking will still greatly improve the borough’s longtime parking issues resulting from a lack of parking at the stadium.
Borough council members agreed any improvement to parking at the stadium would be good for the borough. Council President R.T. Bell said voting “no” to the variance would by “kissing the stadium goodbye.”
“The school district and the borough have worked well together for years,” Bell said during Monday’s meeting. “You make our town better. For all the events that you have down there, you bring a lot of people to our town. We don’t want to lose the stadium.”