SIDE STREETS: Loom room is porch to one, potential death trap to another

What, exactly, is a porch? Is it a covered place to stand while you unlock the door, or a place to sit and watch the kids playing in the yard? Can it be screened and lighted?

Enclosed with walls and windows, and heated?

It's a question that led to a two-year fight between neighbors on North Weber Street. Dottie Weir has appealed to the Planning Commission, the City Council and the Fourth Judicial District Court.

Now she's asked the Colorado Court of Appeals to declare the area in question a porch.

It's the place where she takes her hand-dyed yarn, sits at her large wooden loom and creates award-winning tapestries and fabrics. (See Weir, her loom and porch on my Side Streets blog.)

The fight started in February 2007 after Becky Fuller, who owns a rental property next door, reported Weir for a zoning violation.

Weir, struggling financially since her husband's death in 2004, had sold her west-side weaving business and most of her furniture. To generate income, she rented out her 980-square-foot home, a modest, century-old bungalow sandwiched between two rental properties. Then she moved into a studio apartment - a cute little cottage, really - that she created out of a two-car garage behind the house.

There was one problem: Weir's 728-square-foot cottage was too small to hold her loom. At first, it sat on the tiny porch outside the cottage. But at her age - Weir is "older than 65" - she can't tolerate sitting in the cold to weave. So she had the porch enclosed.

Without permits.

And she needed a variance because the combined square footage of the house, cottage and weaving room exceed city codes governing maximum lot coverage.

But not if the weaving room is a porch, as she argues. It's a carpeted concrete slab, three walls with windows and a door. It has no plumbing, though it is heated and is lighted.

The porch can't be seen by anyone but the renters on each side - and by them only barely. Trees, a fence, a large trampoline and a two-car garage behind Fuller's duplex obscure any view of Weir's porch. And a similar cottage behind the other neighbor's house blocks the view of Weir's 190-square-foot porch.

But Fuller, who lives nearby on Nevada Avenue, reported the violation because "rules are rules" and Weir was in violation of city codes.

"We have a process for developing in this town and we should all follow it," Fuller said.

Maybe you are wondering what's really going on. Maybe Weir angered Fuller somehow.

Not so, Fuller said.

"Dottie is a nice person and a good neighbor," Fuller said.

Maybe Fuller doesn't like the idea of someone weaving in the cottage.

"I honestly don't care what happens there," Fuller said. "It doesn't bother me. It really doesn't matter to me."

So why report Weir and rally neighborhood groups against her and testify against her?

"To me, the issue is the process," Fuller said. "We have a process and she chose not to follow it.

"It's about safety. It's why we have zoning rules and building codes. She could be living in a death trap back there."

She said it's not sour grapes that Weir might get away with something Fuller was denied when neighbors opposed her own proposal to build an apartment behind her duplex.

"This isn't about that," Fuller said. "It's the principle. I would not have had an objection if she had followed the process."

Weir admits she didn't seek permits and variances until after she was busted.

"I made a mistake," Weir said. "I'm sorry. Why are they punishing me? I'm paying deeply for my mistake. It it fair?"

She notes that her tiny porch is in a neighborhood full of rentals and commercial properties and houses wildly out of compliance with codes. So, what is a porch?

Guess the courts will decide.

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Tell me about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bill.vogrin@gazette.com