Elon’s town council has dealt a mixed verdict to two sibling landlords who were previously refused permission for an accessory dwelling after their tendency to rent housing to college students became an issue for some of the town’s leaders.
This penchant for collegiate tenants didn’t hurt David and Joshua Ezrine last Monday when the town council signed off on a special use permit that enables these Greensboro-based property brothers to establish an eight-unit duplex development at the end of Neal Street.
Yet, the duo’s clientele proved more of an albatross earlier that same evening when a majority of the council’s members declined to approve a rezoning request that would’ve allowed the Ezrines to set up a rental apartment over an existing garage along Williamson Avenue.
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These markedly different outcomes emerged during the course of a five-hour meeting that featured both a conventional rezoning hearing on the Williamson Avenue request as well as a more rarefied, quasijuducial proceeding about the special use permit along Neal Street.
Door closes on garage apartment
It was during another quasijudicial hearing in May that Elon’s town council first sat in judgment over the Ezrine brothers. At the time, the pair had a request before the council for a special use permit to allow a second-story garage apartment at 212 Foster Drive. The council ultimately turned down the request due, in part, to the pair’s track record of leasing apartments to students at the town’s eponymous university.
In many respects, it was déjà vu all over again last Monday when the council convened a public hearing to evaluate a rezoning request for an accessory dwelling on a .41-acre lot that the Ezrines own at 309 South Williamson Avenue.
Although billed as a rezoning request instead of a special use permit, this particular item also concerned a second-floor residence that the property owners had hoped to set up over an existing garage that currently serves a single-family home. Their rezoning request was, likewise, dogged by the same concerns about student tenants that had previously bedeviled their application for a special use permit along Foster Drive.
According to town planner Isabell Cooper, the Williamson Avenue proposal was originally filed as a request for a special use permit at the same time as its doppelganger along Foster Drive. Cooper nevertheless said that the town’s planning staff had urged the property owners to repackage their submission as a request for conditional zoning when it turned out that the existing Williamson Avenue residence exceeded the town’s limit on “lot coverage,” or built-upon area.
Cooper went on to inform the council that a special use permit alone wouldn’t have addressed this “nonconforming use,” rendering a zoning change necessary to allow both the accessory dwelling and allowance for extra lot coverage.
“The uses of the property would remain the same,” the town planner added last Monday, “as they are only requesting a waiver to increase the impervious surface.”
In the end, the Ezrines took the planning staff’s cue and reframed their proposal as a “conditional” request for suburban residential zoning, whose proposed stipulations not only included the proposed accessory dwelling but also an increase in this zone’s maximum lot coverage from 40 to 60 percent.
Chad Huffine, a civil engineer who has represented the Ezrines throughout their projects in Elon, informed the town council that his clients intend to develop a two bedroom apartment over the existing garage and provide two gravel parking spots to serve this accessory dwelling.
Huffine noted that these additional parking spaces would increase the lot coverage from 43.9 to about 51 percent, although he added that he had requested a 60 percent maximum just to be on the safe side.
Cooper told the council that this proposal had already received the blessing of the town’s planning staff as well as a nod from a majority of the town’s planning board, which voted 5-to-1 to recommend the rezoning request to the council in April.
The council, however, had some misgivings about the relatively small size of this particular parcel, its location within a high-traffic area, and the fact that its driveway sits cheek to jowl with the entrance to an adjacent lot at 307 South Williamson Avenue.
Linda Dunn, the owner of this neighboring home, conceded that she has had issues with the tight squeeze between the two driveways.
“I’ve talked to students who live there about not using my driveway,” she said, “and we have an agreement that when there are parties, that my driveway is blocked off.”
Dunn went on to discourage the council from requiring a hedge or a fence between the two driveways, which she conceded would hinder maneuverability for her neighbors as well as herself. Yet, an even more crucial takeaway for the council was Dunn’s inference based on the number of parked vehicles outside this home that the dwelling accommodates about five college students – two more than the town’s three-person limit for unrelated individuals in any one residence.
This alleged excess of college-age tenants was amplified by remarks from Ken Sheldon, whose home on Westview Drive lies within shouting distance of the 300 block of South Williamson Avenue.
Sheldon protested that, in the two decades he has lived at this address, college students have come to occupy most of the dwellings along his own dead-end street. He was particularly vexed about one home that backs up to his which he said has become a veritable HQ for one campus fraternity.
“You’ve got music, drinking, trespassing, and littering. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to pick up beer bottles,” the resident said. “The backyard looks like hell because they’ve played beer pong so much that they’ve worn out the grass.”
Similar concerns about the proliferation of student housing emerged two months ago when the council considered the Ezrines’ proposed special use permit along Foster Drive. In that instance, Huffine acknowledged that college students were, in all likelihood, his clients’ prospective tenants for their requested accessory dwelling. Last Monday, the civil engineer was more circumspect when the council interrogated him about the same possibility.
“We’re not going to comment about that,” Huffine declared when Monti Allison, the town’s mayor pro tem, conceded that he assumed students would be the “target market” at 309 South Williamson Avenue. Huffine was unwilling, however, to accept a suggestion from mayor Emily Sharpe that he proposed dwelling be “leased only to non-students.”
“I would say ‘no, ma’am,’” he replied on behalf of his clients.
The council, for its part, didn’t hesitate to reach its own conclusions about the Ezrines’ probable tenants.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this will be used solely, originally, and uniquely for student housing,” councilman Randy Orwig declared before he joined Allison and fellow councilman Michael Woods in voting against the rezoning request.
The only dissenter to this 3-to-1 decision was councilman Quinn Ray, while council member Stephanie Bourland was absent from last Monday’s proceedings.
Opening for duplex development
A much different fate awaited the other request that the council received from the Ezrine brothers last Monday.
In this particular case, the two property owners had sought a special use permit to develop four duplexes, or eight dwelling units in toto, on some 1.87 acres at the end of Neal Street – a rather rudimentary road that dead ends due west of the 300 block of South Williamson Avenue.
Lori Oakley, the town’s planning director, recalled that the Ezrines had submitted an inchoate version of this project in 2022 that had proposed to place the duplexes on “stilts” in order to make room for parking beneath them. Oakley added that this plan fell flat with the town’s planning staff due to its need for multiple waivers from the town’s development rules. It was also unanimously panned by the town’s planning board when it came up for review at the beginning of 2024.
Oakley recalled that the property owners withdrew this initial proposal and replaced it with version that was more in synch with the property’s neighborhood residential zoning. She added that this revamped proposal went through several rounds of staff level review before she and her colleagues felt comfortable with the property owners’ plans. The town’s planning director nevertheless conceded that the project still had to go before the council to obtain a special use permit, which is necessary to construct any duplex within a neighborhood residential district under the town’s current land development ordinance.
The proposal that Oakley went on to present to the council last Monday envisioned all four of the two-unit buildings arrayed around a capacious cul-de-sac at the end of Neal Street. Each of these four duplexes would comprise two three-bedroom dwelling units with floor areas ranging from 2,800 to 2,904 square feet each.
The property owners’ plans also allot each unit a ground-floor garage that would be ample enough for two vehicles, while additional parking would be available in front of the buildings – with room for two more vehicles outside seven of the units, and three more outside the eighth, for a total of 33 parking spaces for the entire eight-dwelling development.
In addition to these parking allocations, the property owners’ plans include drainage provisions and more than 12,000 square feet of open space – roughly half of which would be set aside for some form of recreation such as disc or traditional golf.
Oakley stressed that the only thing which this project needed to meet the town’s land use regulations was the aforementioned special use permit.
In order to evaluate the permit, the town council convened a quasijudicial hearing that resembled a courtroom proceeding more than the public hearings which precede ordinance changes and zoning revisions. Under state law, this special format demands a higher standard for evidence than a conventional public hearing and limits testimony to fact-based assertions from attorneys and witnesses who’ve been sworn in ahead of time.
In addition to Oakley herself, the council heard from Huffine during this quasijudicial proceeding as well as Paul Koonts, a Burlington-based lawyer who serves as the town attorney for several local municipalities but, in this matter, had been hired to represent the applicants.
Three other witnesses also testified during last Monday’s quasijudicial proceeding.
Glenn Patterson, a locally-based real estate appraiser, presented the council with the results of a comparative study that he had conducted on behalf of the property owners to determine what impact, if any duplexes have on the values of traditional single-family homes. In the end, Patterson said that the data failed to show any consistent trend one way or the other.
“There is no empirical evidence to show that the use would have a negative effect on adjoining property or on the neighborhood,” he went on to emphasize.
Meanwhile, two neighboring residents also approached the council with more impressionistic accounts of the project’s potential effects.
Mary Marshall, a homeowner along Ball Park Avenue, shared her concerns about the negative changes that she feared the proposed project would bring to the neighborhood.
“I’ve lived in that house since 1982,” Marshall declared. “That is our homestead, and I’ve always loved living there…until this building has come up.”
Marshall went on to complain about drainage issues from some new dorms that Elon University has erected across the street from her home. She also complained about the indecent behavior of frat boys from a privately owned rental home and the rising tax values that she attributed to this influx of denser development.
This increase in density was also a cause for alarm to Linda Dunn of South Williamson Avenue.
“Why are we cramming in some many people?” Dunn inquired of the town’s elected leaders. “Why not two duplexes instead of four? I’m not sure it fits in that community.”
The council, for its part, sat by impassively as it took in the testimony of these two residents. Its members had a number of questions, however, for some of the other witnesses.
One puzzling point for some council members was the single front entrance that the project’s plans had envisioned for each of the two-unit duplexes. Huffine observed that this design feature is intended to mimic the appearance of a single-family home, which he added is something that’s “strongly encouraged” in the town’s land development ordinance. Huffine nevertheless observed each dwelling unit will have its own interior entry as well as a dedicated side door.
Other council members repeatedly pressed Patterson to explain how he could construe an absence of evidence to be a point in support of the project’s suitability. The appraiser stressed that his overview found nothing to suggest that duplexes are detrimental to a community. Koonts, meanwhile, assured the council that the burden of proof is squarely on the project’s opponents to show it isn’t “in harmony” with the general area.
“Legally we’re entitled to the presumption in our favor unless there’s substantial evidence that it doesn’t fit,” the applicants’ lawyer asserted. “It’s in harmony because it’s a residential use…This is not an asphalt plant in a residential zone; this is not a cellphone tower in a residential zone…You’ve already made the decision that duplexes fit [by including them as an option in a suburban residential zone].
Koonts’ remark drew a concurring opinion from Elon’s town attorney Nick Tosco, who acknowledged that state law indeed puts the burden of proof on the opposition to show that a special use permit would not be “in harmony” with a particular neighborhood.
The issue of harmony was one of six criteria that the applicants had to meet in order to prevail before the town council last Monday. According to municipal officials, the Ezrines also needed to show that the proposed duplexes wouldn’t “materially endanger” the neighborhood’s “public health, safety, comfort, or general welfare,” that they comply with all of the town’s development rules, are in line with its policy guidelines, “will not substantially injure” any adjacent property or impede its development, and can be adequately served by the town.
In the final analysis, the council unanimously concluded that the proposed project met these criteria. Even so, its members did have some added stipulations that Tosco insisted they could unilaterally impose on the applicants if they seemed appropriate.
The council went on to require the property owners to put up a privacy fence along part of the site’s northern perimeter – although at Oakley’s behest they didn’t mandate it within a stream buffer at the east end of this boundary. In the meantime, the council obligated the applicants to resurface a section of Neal Street between Morgan Street and the proposed cul-de-sac – or to provide payment in lieu of this work as spelled out under the town’s unified development ordinance.
Although his consent wasn’t strictly required, Koonts accepted both these conditions on behalf of the applicants. The council went on to vote 4-to-0 to approve special use permit in the absence of council member Stephanie Bourland.
