Your pool will be HOW big?

At this week’s Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, neighbors threw cold water on one family’s plan to build a massive swimming pool.

BY DEBORAH SKOLNIK

A Scarsdale family would like to build a half-sized Olympic pool in their yard.

A MEETING OF THE ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS CAN BE A LOW-KEY AFFAIR, a time when requests are made for a modification of the zoning code—a little give on a minimum setback, for instance. Other entreaties can include permission to conduct business in a residential zone or construct an amenity such as a tennis court on one’s property.

But Wednesday night’s meeting of the ZoBA was not run-of-the-mill. While two of the three cases were fairly routine, one was a record-breaker: The residents of 8 White Birch Lane asked to build an astonishing, 82-foot-long pool that would end just 15 feet from their neighbor’s property line, as opposed to the mandated 30-foot setback. The request burst onto the scene like a child emerging from a chute at a water park.

“The context here is we’re building a half-Olympic-size swimming pool. It aligns with international standards for swimming short races,” one of the owners of 8 White Birch Lane said. “I’m a swimmer, my wife’s a swimmer, my son also is a swimmer…It [will help] us keep in shape, exercise, train, but also maintain a situation where the pool is nice enough that you swim back-and-forth laps and don’t have to make too many turns. It's just a very functional pool that also, in our view, adds value to the house and to the property.”

Board Chairman Jeffrey Watiker set the tone for the discussion to follow. “I will start by saying that to my knowledge, this is the largest length pool that we have had before the board since I've been on it,” he stated. “You’re combining the largest pool—at least in one dimension—that we’ve had with a request for a variance on a fairly large lot. So that, to me, is a pretty heavy lift.”

Large property, but limited options, residents and rep claim

The prospective pool procurers’ plan was especially jarring because their land spans a full acre. Why situate a massive swimming hole so close to one’s next-door neighbor, then, rather than elsewhere on the property? The residents and their representative, landscape architect Daniel Sherman, cited various difficulties they had encountered in contemplating how to position the pool on the lot, which could be subdivided at some point in the future.

“I guess it’s a little bit unusual here, but from a square-footage perspective [our proposed pool] isn’t that much different than a forty-by-twenty,” one of the homeowners contended, citing the measurements of a more conventionally sized pool. “And just putting this into context, we're not throwing parties here and there's not a lot of music here and that sort of thing.”  

What kinds of things are 80 feet long? A blue whale, for starters.

One branch of thought

Importantly, the homeowner and Sherman added, the chosen location would allow the pool to be put in without taking down an old maple. “If we're serious about preserving stuff, you want to preserve the trees for the next owner and for people to come down the road,” the homeowner said. (According to materials submitted prior to the ZoBA meeting, an arborist from SaveATree advised leaving a wide berth around the maple so as not to disturb its roots.)

Yet earlier, a board member had pointed out that another tree would still end up getting the axe: a chestnut tree. “That’s going to go. We want to take it down. It drops things all the time—dropping leaves, dropping nuts,” Sherman said, adding that they wanted to keep the remaining trees proximate to the pool.

Tree trauma The residents say the pool’s location would spare an old maple tree from getting axed. (Actual tree not pictured.)

But that old chestnut? A chestnut tree, however, would be on the chopping block.

A more modest proposal

Board members had much to say about the pool’s proportions. “We often see twenty-by-forty pools and things. So even if it was reduced by fifteen or twenty feet, it would still be a fairly decent-sized pool,” Watiker said. “Given my experience on the board, you’re still talking twelve-by-sixty feet or something along those lines.”

The homeowner reiterated that only a 25-meter pool would suffice. “It just aligns with swimming standards, and if you’re a serious swimmer, then that’s what you want,” he said. Yet, another board member expressed incredulity. “If we give a fifty-percent variance for your swimming pool, could you imagine how many people are going to show up for variances for swimming pools?…It is a pool, it's a luxury,” she said.  “Fifty percent. I don’t think we’ve ever had a fifty-percent variance for a swimming pool,” she continued. “That is a lot, and it’s going towards your neighbor. And you do have other options available. It’s just you like this one, but your neighbor probably doesn’t.”

The neighbor doesn’t like it

Members of the public were invited to comment on the proposal. A resident of 6 White Birch Lane approached the podium and decried the need for a pool of such proportions. “Residential pools are never eighty-three feet. They’re often thirty to forty feet long—luxurious ones, about sixty to seventy feet long. A competitive lap pool can be twenty-five meters, but it can also be twenty-five yards, which is seventy-five feet,” she said. “Our town pool has lap lanes. It serves thousands in our town, including our competitive swim team. They use a seventy-five foot pool. Why does this pool need to be longer than the town pool?”

What else measures 80 feet? If you’d like to clean the White House from top to bottom (as many would), you’d be looking at an 80-foot-high project.

 She also stated that the neighbors already make a disturbing amount of noise at times. “The applicants have a sizeable swing structure…I can attest their children [use it] often, including late at night. I hear the noise, the swing creaking, [while I am] sleeping in my own bed. This is not a complaint, it’s an explanation that I have concerns about the variance to bring a pool so close to my property and so close to my bedroom windows.”

 The speaker concluded her address cordially but firmly. “I hope [my] neighbor gets to enjoy…a potential pool for years to come. But this chosen location and this chosen dimension is a self-created difficulty…and there’s a clear negative impact to my property and my other neighbors,” she said.

Another neighbor doesn’t like it

A man whose home is also adjacent to 8 White Birch Lane took the podium next. “It’s true, we do hear their swing at odd hours in the night,” he said. “It’s a squeaky swing, and they have never been able to take that metal-against-metal kind of noise off of that swing, or even try to. The pool in itself I find is rather too large for the small amount of space that they want to put it in. They have a very large eastern side of that property that can accommodate, let’s say, a more normal-sized pool.”

 He went on to suggest the homeowners install a current pool, which produces a current the user must swim against. Or, he added, “they’re always more than welcome to be able to use the public pool…I mean, that’s why we have it.” To an earlier argument that 8 White Birch Lane’s pool would be amply fenced and screened, he had a rebuttal: “As much as they say they want to have a quiet space, and shrubbery is going to take the noise away, that’s not true, because we’ve always heard their music in the night. They have that swing set that keeps going on until one, two o’clock in the morning. I don’t know why, but it exists.

I’ve been neighbors with them for thirteen years. I know the family, I have done favors for them. We have taken their kids to school, everything, but I think [the proposed pool] is a gross exaggeration.”

Tell me one more thing that’s 80 feet long! Two school buses, end to end.

Pool cues, to be continued…

The persistent pool petitioners then were granted a chance to address their neighbors’ comments. Among their counter-arguments were that the Scarsdale Pool is going to be renovated shortly, and a certain amount of noise has always been a fact of life on White Birch Lane, including people playing basketball. In addition, one of the homeowners insisted, the aesthetic result of their proposed project would be more pleasing than some changes his neighbors have made to their own properties. “I mean, my neighbors, they build, they flush out the whole thing. Everything, the trees—it is disgraceful in my view…” he said. '“I don’t feel like that. Our philosophy is to try to preserve and to be consistent with it.”

 After further discussion, the Board moved to its deliberation phase. The two other, far less contentious petitions it had heard were approved. As for 8 White Birch Lane’s, it was decided that the decision on the variance will be held over until the next ZoBA meeting. Meanwhile, the pool pleaders would be told to come back with a zoning-compliant plan.

 Would you object if someone tried to build an 82-foot-long pool so close to your property? Let us know in the comments.