Clarence Zoning Board of Appeals·June 9, 2026 — Decisions
The Deny-to-Advance Loop Closes · A Pond Splits the Board · 134 Units on Wehrle · A Garage Tabled
The Clarence Zoning Board of Appeals cleared eight of nine appeals in two hours and seventeen minutes on June 9, and the one that mattered most was the one with a paper trail: 7631 Transit Road, LLC won its use variance to operate a retail business — the LENCO Lumber[*] relocation the Planning Board had deliberately denied three weeks earlier for the sole purpose of sending it here. Richard McNamara recused himself; the remaining four voted yes. The board also approved a third story on six multi-family buildings at 8080 and 8112 Wehrle Drive by 4–1, clearing the way for 134 apartments over roughly 60,000 square feet of commercial space, and split 3–2 — against its own chairman — to let a 40-year-old farm pond sit a few feet from new property lines on land bound for Ducks Unlimited. Three fence variances passed with conditions attached. One detached garage was tabled after three neighbors turned up to object.
The Zoning Board of Appeals meets in person and is not live-streamed. The WNY Listening Post therefore documents the ZBA from the Town's official paper trail — the posted agenda (what was requested) and the posted minutes (what was decided). An earlier edition of this page, published June 11, was an agenda preview that could only report the nine requests. The Town posted the June 9 minutes on August 17, and this edition replaces the preview with the board's actual votes, conditions, and reasoning. Because the minutes are the clerk's summary rather than a transcript, nothing below is presented as a verbatim quotation except where the minutes themselves record exact words.
The most consequential item on the docket was the one readers of this page have now met three times. 7631 Transit Road, LLC asked the Zoning Board for a use variance to operate a retail business at 7631 Transit Road, a parcel zoned Restricted Business, where retail of this scale is not a permitted use. The board granted it — Drinkard, Krey, Dale and Chairman Mills in favor, McNamara recused.
The applicant is LENCO Lumber[*], relocating from a leased site at 8075 Sheridan Drive to a parcel it will own. Attorney Sean Hopkins, LENCO's Kevin Coppola[*] and architect David Sutton presented. Staying inside Clarence, Hopkins told the board, was the driving force in the search — and few parcels in town could take a project this size.
Hopkins walked the board through the four-part test a use variance has to satisfy, and leaned hard on the site's history: a mixed-use project was approved here years ago and died for want of a retail tenant, which in his telling makes the hardship something other than self-created. He also disposed of a loose end. The state Department of Environmental Conservation had written in March 2026 warning of possible regulated wetlands under wetland rules that took effect in January 2025. An Albany court struck those rules down on April 8, and the DEC chose not to appeal — so under the pre-2025 regulations, Hopkins said, there are no jurisdictional wetlands on the site.
The board's questions were mostly about how the building will look and how trucks will move. Sutton described an agricultural idiom — cupolas, a pitched metal roof, a brick wainscot, a front canopy — and conceded that the architecture is concentrated on the Transit Road corner and thins out toward the back of the site, because detail costs money and that is where it is seen. Dale observed dryly that this would not be the only lumber yard on Transit Road; Hopkins agreed it would not, but said it would be the best one.
Drinkard, who read from page 44 of the Town Master Plan, found the project matched the Plan's "transitional business" idea of limited retail serving local residents. Krey called the presentation highly persuasive. Mills, summing up before the vote, said the applicant had shown unique circumstances attaching to the parcel and that the design would not alter the essential character of the neighborhood.
A grant is not a green light to build. As Hopkins told the board himself, the project still needs Concept Plan and Development Plan approval from the Planning Board, Landscape Review Committee sign-off, and permits from outside agencies. It returned to the Planning Board's concept-plan docket on July 1.
One project, three meetings, two boards. On May 20 the Planning Board issued its environmental finding and then denied the concept plan — not to kill the project, but because a denial is what lets an applicant take the use question to the Zoning Board. On June 9 the Zoning Board granted the use variance. On July 1 the applicant was back at the Planning Board for concept-plan review. A reader who saw "DENIED" in May was watching step one of three.
Eight of the nine appeals on this docket were area variances — relief from dimensional rules like setbacks, heights and lot sizes. Appeal 7 was the only use variance: permission to do something in a zone that the zone does not allow at all. It is the harder ask, judged on a stricter four-part test that includes proving the property cannot yield a reasonable return under its permitted uses and that the hardship is not self-created. Mills flagged the distinction from the dais before the vote.
The night's genuine disagreement was about a farm pond on 7039 Salt Road that has been there, by a neighboring farmer's account, more than forty years. The Peter Jackson Trust is carving up the late Mr. Jackson's land — the house to his niece, a strip added to a neighbor at 10575 Miland Road, and 157.9 acres plus a separate 91 acres across the road donated to Ducks Unlimited as preservation. Trustee Kris Beyer[*] explained that the redrawn lines leave the pond closer than the 100 feet the code requires from a property line. Bleuer told the board that based on the survey the distance could be as little as zero.
Mills pressed the obvious question: could the lines simply be drawn differently? He suggested squaring off a corner of the Salt Road parcel, or cutting the Miland Road piece to leave the required buffer, and asked whether the trust's attorney had explored the alternatives. Beyer said she had not expected it to be an issue, and that neither neighbor objects to how close the lines run.
Drinkard's objection was not about the pond but about the Town. The code section in play governs ponds of every kind, he noted, and this one has no inlet or outlet, so it falls outside the state DEC's purview and is entirely a local matter. Grant the variance, he argued, and someone living near that pond years from now may look back and say the Zoning Board did not follow the law as written — with the Town, not the trust, carrying the exposure. The trustee, he pointed out, has the option of redrawing the lines instead.
Krey took the other side: the parcels are agricultural, at least two of the three adjoining properties are working farms, and a reconfiguration to dodge the pond would leave awkwardly shaped lots. He acknowledged the durable part — a variance runs with the land in perpetuity, so it binds owners nobody has met yet. Asked what Ducks Unlimited intends to do with the property, Beyer said her directive is that it continue to be farmed; the minutes record the organization's exact words as "until the cows come home."
Dale moved approval, Krey seconded, and it carried 3–2 — Dale, Krey and McNamara in favor, Chairman Mills and Drinkard opposed. It is unusual for a chairman to lose a vote he sits on; the minutes record no further comment from him.
A variance is not a permission slip to one owner. It attaches to the land and survives every future sale, so the board granting one is deciding for people who have not bought the property yet. That is why Krey weighed how the pond would read to a future subdivision, and why Drinkard framed his objection around a hypothetical homeowner years from now rather than the trustee in front of him.
Natale Builders, Inc. won permission, 4–1, to put a third story on six mixed-use buildings at 8080 and 8112 Wehrle Drive — a commercial stretch next to Home Depot and Dave Smith Ford, across from Hobby Lobby. Engineer Ken Zollitsch[*] of GPI presented with Angelo Natale and Bob Corrao[*]. The buildings already comply with the height limit; what they needed was relief from the three-story cap in §229-126(D)(1)(f).
The reason is arithmetic. Town code will not allow stand-alone mixed-use buildings, so a certain number of residential units has to sit above the commercial space — and spreading those units across a wider footprint would break the site's parking requirements. Stacking them vertically is how the project meets parking for both components. The total: 134 units over close to 60,000 square feet of commercial space, all six buildings with elevators. Mills got Zollitsch to say plainly that the project is not economically feasible without the third floor.
Krey, who asked why two stories would not do and whether anything three stories tall stands nearby, cast the lone no. Zollitsch could not name a three-story building in the immediate vicinity, though he noted the Regal IMAX across the town line in Lancaster is considerably taller, and that the board has granted third-story variances before on Sheridan Drive and Main Street. Dale asked about the roof; Zollitsch said they are leaning to a flat roof rather than the sloped one used on earlier projects in more traditional single-family settings. Drinkard cut off a longer design discussion, observing that these questions belong to Development Plan review at the Planning Board. The vote sends the project on to concept approval.
Kenneth Weinstein came for three variances to build a 24-by-24-foot second garage at 5870 Forest Creek Drive for two classic cars. He left having asked the board to table his own application — the only item of the night that did not get a decision.
The application arrived without a foundation or plot plan, which mattered: Bleuer told the board his office had to assume dimensions, and that when he visited the site the stakes did not look like they left six feet to the property line. The board could not say what setback it would actually be granting. Bleuer recommended, pointedly, that Weinstein hire a design professional to scale the plan to his survey — because if the Building Department later measures something different, he is back before this board.
Three residents spoke, all opposed or concerned:
Drinkard asked whether the project violated the Laurel Park homeowners' agreement; Donohue answered that Weinstein's house is not in that subdivision. The board's own objections were about appearance and fit — McNamara and Drinkard both wanted the garage to match the house in siding orientation, color and stone, and Krey wanted landscaping on the neighbor's side. Dale offered a design fix: shift the garage four feet back and four feet toward the center of the yard and the side-yard variance disappears entirely. Weinstein resisted, citing the cost of more asphalt and a deck in the way, and at one point noted he could legally build a fence along the line to block the view instead. Mills said the point was noted.
Mills laid out the choice — vote tonight, or table and come back with elevations, a stone façade, landscaping, and some exploration of moving the structure. Weinstein first asked for a vote, then, after Drinkard said he wanted to see an architect-prepared elevation before deciding, asked to table. The board obliged unanimously.
The rest of the docket passed, most of it with conditions. All three front-yard fence requests were granted. Chris Louisos got his 2-foot variance at 9063 Orchid Ledge for a fence already installed — he had told the board his installer offered him May or September, and he took May and hoped for the Town's understanding — on condition that he landscape both sides per the plan the chairman marked as Exhibit A and finish within 90 days. Lynn McCarthy got the same relief at 4866 Kraus Road, conditioned on removing the dead evergreens killed off by black walnut toxicity and matching the neighbor's already-approved fence at 4875 Smiley Terrace. Chris and Denise Santora[*] got the largest of the three — 4 feet, for an 8-foot fence at 5735 Newhouse Road — over Dale's dissent and Drinkard's stated dislike of tall front-yard fences, with perennials required along both fence lines. Krey's rationale was geometric: the Santora house sits 270 feet back, so the fence in their front yard is really screening the neighbor's back yard.
Appeal 1, the lot split, passed unanimously. CT & ST Family, LLC — represented by manager Chris Thompson[*], whose father designed both Hilton Road and Fairlane Drive — won 26 feet of frontage relief and 200 square feet of lot-area relief to carve a new lot on Fairlane Drive out of 6120 Herr Road. There are no buyers and no plans; the family wanted the option. Drinkard, checking the Planning Board's May 6 minutes, corrected the record: the frontage is 99 feet, not the 102 feet those minutes recorded.
Appeal 6 also passed unanimously. Carolyn Vinci got a 6-foot-6-inch side-yard variance to expand a single-car garage at 4445 Westwood Road into a two-car garage with an office — a project she began considering after her vehicle was stolen from the driveway while her son was undergoing cancer treatment. The board liked the drawings; Mills noted the stone and brick detail and Drinkard said the improvement could only add value to a well-kept neighborhood.
Every recorded action from the June 9 minutes. Five of six members sat: Chairman Ryan Mills, Gerald Drinkard, Patrick Krey, Richard McNamara and Steven Dale; Forest Rung was absent. Richard McNamara recused himself from Appeal 7. Votes are unanimous 5–0 unless noted.
Use variance to operate a retail business at 7631 Transit Road, Restricted Business zone (§229-76). Motion by Krey, seconded by Drinkard. Mills found unique circumstances attaching to the parcel and no alteration of neighborhood character; Krey adopted the applicant's four-criteria rationale, entered as Exhibit A.
Drinkard Aye · Krey Aye · Dale Aye · Mills Aye · McNamara Recused
Variance to allow an existing pond closer than 100' to proposed property lines, Agricultural Rural Residential (§93-19(D)(1)). Motion by Dale, seconded by Krey. Krey cited the agricultural character of the adjoining parcels; Drinkard warned the Town could carry future legal exposure and noted the trustee could redraw the lot lines instead.
Dale Aye · Krey Aye · McNamara Aye · Mills Nay · Drinkard Nay
Variance to allow a third story on six multiple-family housing buildings at 8080 & 8112 Wehrle Drive, Commercial zone (§229-126(D)(1)(f)). Motion by Dale, seconded by Drinkard. 134 units over roughly 60,000 sq ft of commercial space; elevators in all six. Project proceeds to concept approval.
Drinkard Aye · McNamara Aye · Mills Aye · Dale Aye · Krey Nay
Three variances sought: a secondary detached garage; 376 sq ft of relief for a 576 sq ft accessory structure; and 4' of side-yard setback relief (§229-55(H), §229-55(E)(1)). Applicant requested tabling after board members asked for an architect-prepared elevation and three neighbors objected. Motion to table by Mills, seconded by Drinkard.
Variances of 26' frontage (to allow 99' along Fairlane Drive) and 200 sq ft of lot area (to allow 19,800 sq ft), creating one new lot of record split from 6120 Herr Road. Residential Single-Family (§229-49(A), §229-50(C)). Motion by Drinkard, seconded by Dale. Mills found the frontage and lot size consistent with Fairlane Drive, High Street, Eastwood Road and Hilton Drive.
2' variance for a 6' fence within the front-yard setback (§101-3(C)(2)). Motion by Krey, seconded by McNamara. Conditions: landscaping on the north side per Exhibit A; evergreens or similar on the south side; installation complete within 90 days. Applicant agreed. The 8' section at issue was already installed before the hearing.
2' variance for a 6' fence within the front-yard setback (§101-3(C)(2)). Motion by McNamara, seconded by Dale. Conditions: remove all existing dead evergreens; fence to match the color and style of the recently approved fence at 4875 Smiley Terrace. Applicant agreed.
6'6" variance to allow a 6' principal-structure side-yard setback for an attached garage addition. Residential Single-Family (§229-52(B)). Motion by Krey, seconded by Dale. Mills found the plans consistent with the character and environmental conditions of the neighborhood.
4' variance for an 8' fence within the front-yard setback (§101-3(C)(2)). Motion by Mills, seconded by McNamara. Condition: plant perennials along the inside of the north and south fence lines. Dale objected to setting an 8-foot front-yard precedent; Drinkard stated a general preference against tall front-yard fences.
Drinkard Aye · McNamara Aye · Mills Aye · Krey Aye · Dale Nay
Motion by Drinkard, seconded by Krey.
Motion by Krey.
This edition was updated on August 18, 2026, from the official minutes the Town posted on August 17. The version published June 11 was an agenda preview built before any outcomes were on the record; it reported the nine requests and said so plainly. Everything above — votes, conditions, reasoning, the recusal — now comes from the Town's posted minutes of the June 9 meeting, which supersede the preview.
A note on one name. The June 9 minutes render the Transit Road applicant's business as LENCO Lumber, while the Town's own posted agendas for the same project — including the Town Board agenda of August 19, 2026 — render it LENCO Supplies. Two official Town documents disagree, so this page does not treat either as having settled it: the agenda spelling is used elsewhere in the Public Record, agendas being the authoritative source for proper nouns, and the variant is recorded here and flagged rather than quietly harmonized. The minutes are internally inconsistent on two names and both remain flagged: the LENCO representative appears as both "Kevin Coppola" and "Kevin Copolla," and the Appeal 8 applicant appears as "Santora" throughout the body but "Stattora" once in the attendance list — the agenda's "Santora" is used here. The Appeal 4 trustee appears as both "Kris Beyer" and "Kris Beyer Jones." The Appeal 1 agenda names Daniel Thompson as applicant; the person who appeared was Chris Thompson, manager of CT & ST Family, LLC. "Orchid Ledge," queried in the June preview as absent from the Town street index, is confirmed by the minutes.
Because this board is not recorded for broadcast, there is no audio and no transcript, and the minutes paraphrase rather than transcribe. Nothing here is presented as a spoken quotation except the one phrase the clerk recorded as exact words. Whisper correction and street-name validation, which apply to transcript-based briefs, are not used for minutes-based ones: the clerk's text is authoritative as written. Names carry the [*] flag where an official source is inconsistent or unconfirmed.