Variance

Vernon Hill thinks a castle should have a wall around it, and a tall one at that. But the board that needed to give permission for the Commerce Bancorp chairman to partially enclose his 44.2-acre estate on Featherbed Lane thinks differently. The township Zoning Board has denied Hill's application to install sections of 6-foot-tall fencing connected by strips of 8-foot-high hedges to hide and protect Villa Collina, his nearly 46,000-square-foot home. The legal height for a front-yard fence in town is 3 feet.

Veterans yesterday won a court battle to hold on to the M-60 combat tank that stands guard at their post. But the war with neighbors who say the 50-ton tank is out of place in their historic community may not be over. Superior Court Judge John A. Sweeney directed Burlington City's Land Use Board to grant Scully-Bozarth Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1817's application for a use variance, allowing the 1960 military hardware to remain. "I am satisfied that the tank at its location on the VFW property promotes the public morals and welfare, while impacting with minimal, rather than substantial, detriment to the historic district and the neighborhood generally," Sweeney concluded.

Having already blocked attempts to modernize the city's plumbing code to permit the use of PVC pipe underground, the Street administration has apparently pressured building officials to stop issuing variances for the money-saving construction material. That was the message delivered to a small local builder in May when he sought just such a variance from the Board of Building Standards. "Every time we granted a variance, it was like a slap in the face to the mayor, who doesn't want it," an unidentified city official is heard saying on a tape recording of the board's May 2 meeting, at which Johnson made his request.

A proposal for a dock where L.L. Bean employees could fly-cast into a retention basin near the new store and customers could cruise in kayaks was rescinded at a Planning Board meeting this week. The application for a variance was withdrawn Thursday by Davis Enterprises, the company that built the Promenade at Sagemore, a strip of upper-echelon stores on a stretch of Route 73 south of the Marlton Circle. About 450,000 square feet of retail space has been filled in the Promenade with stores such as Talbots, Jos. A. Bank, Coach Leather, Tommy Hilfiger, J. Jill and Ann Taylor.

In an emotionally charged meeting, the zoning board approved an early but important step in building a Catholic high school in Deptford. Much to the chagrin of neighbors who thought the land should be preserved, the township's Board of Zoning Adjustments voted, 5-2, on Tuesday to allow the Diocese of Camden to move forward with plans to build a 1,600-student school on Blackwood-Barnsboro Road. At the meeting - the third in as many months to end close to midnight - diocese officials were seeking a use variance that would permit the school even though Deptford's master plan does not call for such a large institution in that area.

Zoning board meetings are often placid affairs, over quickly with a minimum of fuss. But last night, the Diocese of Camden brought before Deptford's zoning board an application for a use variance, hoping such a move would allow construction of a 1,600-student Catholic high school on 59 acres it aims to buy. And some say the parcel, a vegetable farm on Blackwood-Barnesboro Road, is land that a hardworking farmer hoped would never be developed....

Something smells in a land deal that saw a Washington Township Christmas tree farm bought and resold within an hour, netting investors a quick $1.59 million profit - and the scent definitely is not pine. It may take a continuing FBI investigation into local politics to determine why the Washington Township Board of Adjustment granted the farm's new owners a variance allowing house construction. The land's original owners had unsuccessfully sought the same variance for two years.

A Superior Court judge yesterday temporarily lifted an order that had halted construction this week on a 160-unit adults-only community in Washington Township. Judge John M. Waters Jr. said the work stoppage could cause irreparable harm to J.S. Hovnanian & Sons, the builder, and to those who had bought the houses under construction. Waters' order came during a three-way conference call with lawyers for Washington Township and for Hovnanian. The judge said the township had not submitted enough evidence to support the stop-work order, which the Zoning Board of Adjustment issued Monday.

Lawyers for J.S. Hovnanian & Sons are expected to seek permission today to continue construction of a controversial 160-home adults-only community on the site of a former Christmas tree farm in Washington Township. The attorneys plan to ask a judge in Superior Court in Gloucester County to lift a stop-work order issued Tuesday by the township's Zoning Board of Adjustment. About a dozen homes are under construction. Township officials said yesterday that they would oppose the move.

The zoning board in this dry town voted unanimously last night to grant a variance allowing a family of aspiring vintners to bottle and sell their inaugural label at their roadside farm stand. Bill and Penni Heritage, whose family has been farming a 150-acre plot since 1850, began planting grapes three years ago in an attempt to find a profitable alternative to their peach and apple orchards. They now have six acres of chardonnay and cabernet vines, and the first barrels of wine are fermenting in an old wood cellar.