Board of Zoning Appeals of the City of Hammond, Lake County v. Waskelo

In Board of Zoning Appeals of the City of Hammond, Lake County v. Waskelo, 240 Ind. 594, 168 N.E.2d 72 (Ind. 1960), the court denied a variance for property owners who voluntarily subdivided their property. At the time of the purchase of the subject property in that case, the property was one lot and conformed to the applicable zoning regulations. After the subdivision, the owners sold the improved lot and retained the remaining lot, which did not meet frontage requirements. The owners then sought a variance to construct a dwelling on the substandard lot. In that circumstance, the court refused to find a hardship to justify a variance, stating: "The property as it existed at the time of purchase conformed fully with the provisions of the zoning ordinance." Id. at 73. The court went on to state that the owners' decision to sell the improved portion of their property, with full knowledge of the restriction on the use of the remaining portion, is "not the result of any invalid application of terms of the zoning ordinance to their particular property, even though landowners might have been under a hardship in utilizing the portion of the lots which they retained." Id. at 74.