Williamsville Zoning Board of Appeals·June 17, 2026
Paved Without a Permit · Seven Variances, One Dissent · A Bedroom Over the Garage · The Five-Factor Test
The Zoning Board of Appeals granted both variances it heard Wednesday night, but not without argument. In the larger case, the board voted 4–1 to grant seven area variances to the medical office at 5800 Main Street, where a contractor had already torn up and rebuilt the parking lot — front and back — without a permit, leaving setbacks, a required screening wall and perimeter curbing all short of code; the grant carries a condition that the landscaping be built as drawn on the plan the applicant took to the Planning Board, with member Patricia Fulwiler casting the lone no. Earlier, the board voted 5–0 to grant a side-yard setback variance of roughly two feet for a bedroom-and-bathroom addition over the garage at 63 Hirschfield, where a family says two growing children can no longer share the house's only spare room; that grant comes tied to a one-hour fire-rated wall on the side facing the nearest home. Both were area variances, and both were decided the same evening.
The 5800 Main Street medical office came to the Zoning Board on Wednesday with an unusual problem: the work was already done. A contractor had reconstructed the building's parking lot — front and rear — without pulling a permit, the applicant's attorney told the board, and only afterward did the practice sit down with the village planning office to file a new site plan. Measured against the mixed-use district's current code, that plan needed seven area variances.
The property is home to an oculoplastic surgeon[*] whose patients are, in the attorney's words, “elderly” and dealing with “vision issues,” which makes parking the practice's “number one concern.” The rebuild had already cut the lot from 28 spaces to 18 — seven to five in front, 21 to 13 in the rear — against a code that, the board was told, requires only four. And on a lot just 58.85 feet wide (a figure the attorney first read aloud as 88.85 before catching the error himself: “I did that purposely to see if I was saying anything”), every foot handed back to a setback is a foot taken from parking.
The seven variances sort into three kinds. Five are setbacks — parking pushed to within 3.35, 3, and as little as 0.81 feet of property lines where the code wants 10 feet along Academy Street and 5 feet along the west line. The sixth waives the code's required structural screen — a fence or wall — in favor of landscaping. The seventh waives perimeter curbing the applicant said would foul the lot's existing drainage. The attorney walked the board through the state's five-factor area-variance test (see box), leaning hardest on the argument that a fully compliant lot would be an unusable one: “The more you squeeze it in, the less parking you have.”
The board was not sold on grass alone. Several members worried that with no curb or wall, a car could roll off the pavement and onto the sidewalk; one pressed on why the lot couldn't simply have been restriped instead of rebuilt — “reconstruction is reconstruction,” a member said, “that's ripping it up” — which is exactly what tripped the review threshold in the first place. In the end the board folded all seven into a single resolution and granted them 4–1, on the condition that the landscaping be installed as drawn on the plan the practice presented to the Planning Board, with shrubs planted tall enough to keep vehicles from driving through. Member Patricia Fulwiler voted no. The Planning Board must still approve the site plan before anything is final.
Zoning hearings run on jargon. Here is what Wednesday's ran on:
The evening's first hearing was smaller and friendlier. A man who told the board plainly, “I am not the applicant,” came forward to speak for the family that owns 63 Hirschfield — a two-bedroom house of roughly 1,600 square feet they bought about a decade ago. The family now has two children who, he said, are getting too old to share a room, so they want to build a bedroom-and-bathroom addition above the garage, growing the house to about 2,000 square feet. The request: a side-yard setback variance of roughly two feet, leaving the addition about five feet off the north property line.
He worked methodically through the same five-factor test, arguing the addition would sit comfortably among a neighborhood of 1,200-to-2,300-square-foot homes, that a narrower design would only shrink an already-tight five-by-seven-foot bathroom, and that the north wall could be built without windows to shield the nearest neighbor. Board members pushed on whether the addition could be reshaped to avoid the variance; the representative said the interior stairs and bathroom left little room to move. A neighbor, Mary Rates of 56 Highland[*], came to the microphone not to object but to offer a phone number for the out-of-state owner next door, and a petition of neighbors registered no opposition. The board granted the variance 5–0. One string came attached in the fine print: because the addition sits so close to the adjoining house, the board noted the applicant will have to build that wall as a one-hour fire-rated wall with no openings — which, as it happens, is what the closet-lined design already intended.
A note on names: the representative's surname was rendered in the raw audio as “Patrick Fully”[*] and could not be verified. He identified himself as not the applicant, and he is a different person from Zoning Board member Patricia Fulwiler, who sat on the panel and voted in both cases. This brief keeps the two strictly separate.
Five members sat: Chair Richard Andrews, and members Christine Petrie, William Tuyn (serving as alternate), Shawn Lemay and Patricia Fulwiler. The board decides by roll-call vote. No recusals were recorded. The roster is verified against the official ZBA agenda; vote counts and per-member attributions are drawn from the meeting video, pending the minutes (see the Editor's Note).
Variance of roughly two feet, leaving the addition about five feet from the north property line, to add a bedroom and five-by-seven-foot bathroom above the garage of a ~1,600 sq ft home (growing to ~2,000). A neighbor spoke to volunteer contact information, not to oppose; a neighbor petition recorded no objection. Because the addition sits close to the adjoining house, the board noted a building-code consequence: that wall must be a one-hour fire-rated wall with no openings.
The seven variances, granted together in one resolution under New York Village Law §7-712-b[*] and the village code: parking setbacks reduced to 3.35 ft (rear) and 3 ft (front) along Academy Street where 10 ft is required; setbacks reduced to 3 ft and 0.81 ft along the west line where 5 ft is required; removal of the required structural screen where landscaping is provided; and removal of perimeter curbing along the landscaped edges. Granted on the condition that the landscaping be built as shown on the site plan presented to the Planning Board, with shrubbery tall enough to keep vehicles from driving through. Member Patricia Fulwiler voted no; Petrie, Tuyn, Lemay and Chair Andrews voted yes. Planning Board site-plan approval is still required.
Motion to adjourn by member Fulwiler, seconded by member Tuyn; carried on a voice vote. The chair remarked the two hearings had gone faster than expected.
This is the first Listening Post coverage of the Williamsville Zoning Board of Appeals. The docket, case numbers, addresses, and board roster in this brief were cross-checked against the official June 17, 2026 ZBA agenda (Zoning-Board-AGENDA-meeting-6.17.26.pdf, williamsvilleny.gov). A few points on how it was assembled: