News

By Steve Plunkett
    
    Two months after he bought his $1.6 million waterfront home on a canal west of the Intracoastal Waterway, Jason Pepitone got a letter from Boca Raton code enforcement.
    An outdoor kitchen in the corner of his back yard was built without permits, the April 18 letter said. And the chickee hut over it was encroaching on required setbacks.
    The letter gave Pepitone 20 days to pull a building permit for the kitchen and 30 days to fix the chickee violation. The only way to do that, the letter said, was to remove the hut and place it 5 feet from any property line and 10 feet from the main building.
    That presented a problem: The back yard, at 785 NE 33rd St., is not quite 15 feet deep, so no place in it is both 5 feet from the back lot line and 10 feet from the house.
    Applying for a building permit uncovered more problems. The barbecue/summer kitchen is only 1.7 feet from the west lot line and 0.35 feet from the back line. The code requires 5 feet. And a marble paver deck around the pool extends to the east and west lot lines, instead of leaving 7 feet of green space on both sides.
    Now Pepitone is entangled in a legal battle, one his lawyer says Pepitone isn’t responsible for starting. Pepitone is seeking variances from the city’s Planning and Zoning Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustment, arguing that he was not the one who installed the noncompliant structures.
    “The Petitioner acquired his property on Feb. 13, 2016, and the BBQ, marble pavers and tiki hut had been in place for approximately eight years prior to the petitioner’s acquisition of the property,” Pepitone’s lawyer, Arthur Koski, wrote in the application. “The structures do not impact any adjoining neighbor as evidenced by the silence of said neighbors over the past years.”
    Koski, who is legal counsel and executive director of the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District, also represented barrier island residents in a lawsuit against the city over its approval of a site plan for a synagogue and museum on Palmetto Park Road. A separate lawsuit overturned that approval.
    City officials recommend denying Pepitone the variances.
    “The City Code does not provide for establishing zoning setback requirements based on adjacent property owners’ satisfaction,” Jim Bell, the city’s acting deputy director of development services, said in a report to the boards.
    “Although the applicant may not have installed the uncovered pool deck/terrace [marble pavers], outdoor kitchen/barbecue grill structure, and chickee hut in the required setbacks himself, the applicant is responsible for ensuring his property is compliant with city code requirements,” Bell wrote.
    Bell said the pool and a smaller deck were permitted and installed at the property, which is about a half-mile south of Spanish River Boulevard, in 1997. Aerial photos show the marble pavers covering the backyard were put in after 2007. The kitchen was added after 2011, the chickee hut after January 2015.
    Bell also said the pavers might be dumping water onto the neighbors’ properties.
    “There appears to be no swale area or drainage structure in place to address drainage,” he wrote. “As such, the sides of the marble-pavered pool deck may be draining into the properties on the east and west sides of the subject property.”
    The request for variances was postponed from the Oct. 20 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board. It has not been rescheduled.