SCRANTON \u2014 The city Historical Architecture Review Board approved a fence at a parking lot at the former Plotkin shoe store at 301-303 Penn Ave.<\/p>\n
Property owner Don Mammano recently installed the fence without HARB approval because he did not know he needed it and belatedly submitted an application to HARB. It is an advisory body and its denials take the form of recommendations against certificates of appropriateness for applications. The board rejected the fence last month and that decision went to Scranton City Council to uphold or overturn.<\/p>\n
During a Dec. 9 council hearing on the matter, Mammano said he erected the fence when he paved the lot and striped it for permit parking and parking for ventures by restaurateur Rob Friedman at the 16th Ward and at Mammano\u2019s GAR Building, both across the street from the parking lot. Mammano also said a zoning variance for a parking lot required that he also erect a fence and he was not aware of the HARB meeting when it rejected his fence application.<\/p>\n
Council on Dec. 16 overturned HARB\u2019s rejection of the fence and remanded the matter back to the board.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, HARB again reviewed the fence application. HARB Chairman Michael Muller said the board\u2019s rejection was based on procedural concerns and a lack of details in an application that differed from the fence that was erected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you could appreciate, we got one sheet of paper for a segment of a fence that wasn\u2019t the fence that\u2019s there. We didn\u2019t know where it was going, or what color it is, or how tall it is, or any of that,\u201d Muller said, according to an Electric City Television video of the meeting posted on YouTube.<\/p>\n
Mammano acknowledged an inconsistency between the application and the fence that was installed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI apologize. We\u2019re kind of here out of order,\u201d Mammano said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t intentional, but I think everyone can see what\u2019s there now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muller replied: \u201cNo doubt the fence is lovely. I don\u2019t take exception to the fence at all. \u2026 I think for a lack of information, it was difficult for us to approve something without all of the details there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The board voted 4-0 \u2014 with Muller, Conrad Bosley, Katie Kearney and William Lesniak all in favor \u2014 to approve Mammano\u2019s fence application, and with a suggestion that he try to incorporate vegetation as decorative screening, if possible.<\/p>\n
Mammano said he would see if he could include plantings, but that would depend on whether it could be done without encountering or disturbing underground stormwater drainage pipes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 The city Historical Architecture Review Board approved a fence at a parking lot at the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[182,139,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-67902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-local-news","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-scranton","11":"tag-scranton-headlines","12":"tag-scranton-news","13":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}