Under the new code, the the alley breaks that condition. That ordinance change was intended to bring more flexibility and in most cases it does. It's it's unusual to see a situation where the reverse corner front yard is so small.

The uniqueness here is created by the situation that the lot is in, which is kind of that reverse corner lot configuration. And there has been irregular platting, as you saw the, um, lot is facing Marshall, but then everything else on that block is actually facing, uh, 10th Avenue North. Um, and also the project's approval history and prior, uh, planning approvals.

I do think that the adjacent properties are compelling practical difficulty. That's something that we found on several other applications. The applicant cited one. But there are there are other ones where we've found that having a consistent street front is something that we want want to accomplish and the buildings adjacent to this, one is just a three foot setback or 3.7 feet across the street, the setback is smaller.

I think the ordinance is pretty clear that a variance requires practical difficulties arising from circumstances unique to the property itself. Typically physical conditions such as irregular lot shape, topography, or other constraints not created by the applicant. In this case, the staff has found, and I agree, that no such physical circumstances exist.

We have variances partly to give us as a city the ability to make up for maybe uh something that was missed when we designed our code, right? And when we designed our code or like an edge case for a specific property. And to me this um this is an edge case of and it and it's it's quoted in the applicant's letter about staff's comments. Um even in the presentation today, staff's comments were saying about that the reason we changed this code in 2024 was to be more permissive. So this is like a side effect of a flawed code section in my opinion.