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The Altoona Zoning Hearing Board Wednesday granted a special exception to allow Penn State Altoona to build a 2,100 square foot addition to the Cypress Building to help improve the college's Mechanical Engineering Department.
Because the Ivyside campus is in a suburban residential zone, the classroom building is a nonconforming use, which makes the project an expansion of a nonconforming use, thus requiring the special exception.
Prior to the hearing, the city tried and failed to uncover documentation of a planned residential development or similar zoning overlay that would have exempted the college from the need to obtain Zoning Board permission for the project.
It might behoove the city to consider changes in zoning that would allow the college to do such projects that are clearly within the normal scope of its development, without going to the board in the future, said Rebecca Brown, director of the city's Department of Codes & Inspections. That could involve rezoning the campus tract institutional or educational, when the city reviews its zoning code following completion of the ongoing work on the city's comprehensive plan, Brown said.
The kind of zoning Brown referred to is common for Penn State campuses, said Douglas Wenger, Penn State's project manager on the Cypress job.
The Cypress work will involve renovation of a classroom and creation of a new faculty research workshop, according to consulting engineer Shep Hoehling of Pennoni in State College.
The college embarked on the project after it identified "some areas of the curriculum they needed to improve," Hoehling told the board.
The project area borders on homes along
Pennway Avenue and Ivyside Drive, but won't lead to any incursions into the neighborhood and will have no detrimental effect on the neighborhood's residential character, Hoehling said.
The brick addition will match the brick of the existing building and will be consistent with the look of the rest of the campus, officials said.
Traffic to the building is mainly pedestrian, Wegner said, noting the project is an important one for an important program.
The city Planning Commission will likely be asked to consider approving a land development plan for the project next month, Brown said.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.