The Manhattan Board of Zoning Appeals on Wednesday advanced, on a 2-1 vote, a request from the Manhattan Mennonite Church to reduce the number of off-street parking spaces for a planned new church building at 821 Poyntz Avenue.
City code requires places of assembly, such as churches, to have one parking space per five people based on the occupancy of the space. Since the church would have a maximum occupancy of 220, city code would require 44 spaces. The church sought an exception to reduce the number of spaces to 20, since the size and layout of the lot makes it nearly impossible to reach that threshold, without reducing the size of the building or removing trees on the property.
