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Municipal Planning Commission OKs easement release

Photo by Evan Bevins Parkersburg resident Mark Zielinski discusses his request that the city vacate utility easements on an 18th Street parcel where he wants to build a garage during the Municipal Planning Commission meeting Friday at the city building.

PARKERSBURG — The Municipal Planning Commission on Friday approved a request to vacate utility easements on an 18th Street parcel so the property owners can build a garage.

Parkersburg City Planner Sam Tuten said he could not recommend vacating the easements because a sanitary sewer lateral extends 30 or so feet into the parcel, almost directly under where the garage is to be built. But property owner Mark Zielinski said if a problem arose, he could access the line for repairs with relative ease.

Zielinski and his wife, Lori, applied for the easements to be vacated next to their 1714 18th St. house. The parcel was once part of Lee Street, which was abandoned between 17th and 18th streets in 1963, according to a report prepared for the meeting.

“Releasing those rights would transfer responsibility of the line to them and future property owners,” Tuten said.

Zielinski said that concerned him initially, but after speaking with an employee of the Parkersburg Utility Board, he learned he could access the line, to which only his house is connected once it reaches his property, from an area between his house and the rise on which he plans to have the garage built.

“I’m hoping nothing ever happens, but at least I have a course of action,” he said.

Required setbacks and the Zielinskis’ desire not to have the garage toward the front of the parcel, even if a variance was granted, meant there was little room to place the garage anywhere else.

The planning commission voted 9-0, with two members absent, to approve the request, providing the Zielinskis combine the two parcels into one, a request of the PUB to comply with West Virginia Public Service Commission regulations. It now goes to Parkersburg City Council for consideration.

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