Driveway permit tied up for years in court

PALMER - How long does it take a person to get permission to build a driveway?

If you're talking about Hans Svendson and his company Svendson Properties, and the location is Settlers Bay, the answer is two and a half years and counting. The Settlers Bay Owners Association and Svendson have been tied up with a lawsuit in the Palmer Courthouse since June 2009.

The owners association says Svendson needs to access his property at the corner of Sunset Avenue and Mainsail Avenue from Mainsail.

But Svendson says he's tried to get a permit for a driveway there and the Mat-Su Borough won't allow it because there isn't enough room between the stop sign on Mainsail and the spot where the driveway would go. Svendson could get a 10-foot driveway in there that the borough would approve, but not if he intends to use his property commercially, which he does. He has 19 storage units in mind.

Svendson already has a 20-foot driveway off of Sunset that the borough has approved and has been in place for 10 years.

The dispute wound up in court, apparently with lawsuits coming from both sides. They went to a mediator and reached a resolution May 5, 2010, according to court documents.

That would have been the end of it except that the terms of the agreement were that Svendson would build the Mainsail driveway and erase the Sunset one, that Svendsno would pay $2,500 and receive $250.

But when Svendson applied for the 20-foot driveway permit and was denied, he filed a lawsuit to get out of the arbitration agreement.

At trial, according to court documents, borough public works employee Andy Dean testified that he issued a permit to build a driveway, but would not issue a final permit.

"(He) later determined that a 10-foot Mainsail driveway would not be safe and that ‘he could not sleep at night' with the proposed driveway," Svendson's attorney, Paul Kelly, wrote in a brief filed in the case.

But, the homeowners association points out in competing briefs that it wasn't exactly a blanket denial. The brief quotes Dean's testimony when asked if he would approve a 10-foot driveway for residential use:

"I would; however, driveways can be revoked, and if they change the use to commercial, I would have to revoke the permit," according to the brief filed by the association's attorney, Kenneth Albertson.

The association argues that Svendson hit on this storage unit idea after he'd signed that arbitration agreement.

"It is only the subsequent change in Svendson's plans for the property that caused Svendson to later wish that something else had been agreed upon. But buyer's remorse is not a basis for reformation of the settlement agreement," Albertson wrote.

On the other side, Svendson notes that the association had permitted commercial use on the property and that he didn't know he wouldn't get his driveway when he signed the agreement.

"Settlers Bay argues that the court should enforce the settlement agreement, essentially rendering Lot 28 worthless as there would be no legal access," Kelly wrote.

The case made it through trial at the end of last year, but the judge, Eric Smith, has asked for more briefs, which were filed in mid-January.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at Andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.