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By DAN SIMON; Times Leader Correspondent
Saturday, August 20, 1994 Page: 3A
HAZLETON — Some leftover bricks, an employee mistake and a
wider-than-usual city right-of-way are turning into a headache for Virginia
and Rocco Bognet.
The Bognets, owners of the Lara’s Gate Apartments on 1429 E. Broad St., are
in trouble with the city of Hazleton because of a set of 4-foot high roadside
brick pillars that intrude about seven to nine feet into the city’s
right-of-way. The city wants the L-shaped piers moved. the Bognets want the
Hazleton Planning Commission to grant their encroachment request.
“They pose a potential hazard to vehicular traffic,” Jack Mundie, city
public works manager, said in a letter to the commission. “We strongly
recommend the application for encroachment be denied and the pillars removed.”
The Bognets have adopted an “everybody else does it, why can’t we defense?”
arguing that numerous businesses and offices on the road are also in violation
of the right-of-way, which they maintain is one of the widest in the area.
“You’d have to be 20 or 25 feet off the roadway to hit them,” attorney
Frank Bognet, representing the Bognets, told the planning commission members.
“Unfortunately we screwed up; we shouldn’t have put them there, but so have
lots of others,” Frank Bognet said.
The mistake occurred in 1992 when Bognet Construction employees were
finishing a project at the apartments. The workers experienced what Frank
Bognet described as “extra brick syndrome.”
“We had 900 bricks left over,” Rocco Bognet said. “We decided to build
something.
“The employees who built them thought I told them the wrong spot and built
them where they are now.”
The Bognets are fighting for encroachment approval because the piers can’t
be moved without significant damage. Attorney Bognet asked the commission for
more time to submit legal precedents saying the encroachment could be granted
without risk of liability to the city in the event of an accident. As a result
the commission won’t decide the application until its September meeting.
The commissioners were divided on the matter.
“If they’d obtained the proper permit they would have known they were
building them in the wrong place and wouldn’t have had this problem,” said
Wayne Tomaino, a planning commissioner. “Just because they’re violating and
someone else is violating doesn’t make it right.”
“We can’t hold one hostage,” Jeff Mason, another commissioner, said. “Do we
have a right to go after the others? How can we single out one?”