§ 1. General and specific.
Except where specifically defined herein, all words used in this chapter shall carry their customary meanings. Words used in the present tense include the future, and the plural includes the singular; the word "lot" includes the word "plot"; the word "building" includes the word "structure"; the word "shall" is intended to be mandatory; "used" or "occupied" shall be considered as though followed by the words, "or intended, arranged, or designed to be used or occupied."
The following specific definitions shall apply:
Accessory Building: A subordinated building or a portion of the main building on a lot, the use of which is customarily incidental to that of the main or principal building.
Accessory Use: A use customarily incidental and subordinate to the principal use or building and located on the same lot with such principal use or building.
Airport: Any area of land or water which is used or intended for the landing and taking off of aircraft, and any appurtenant areas which are used or intended for use for airport buildings or other airport facilities or rights-of-way, including all necessary taxiways, aircraft storage and tie-down areas, hangars, and other necessary buildings and open spaces.
Alley: A public thoroughfare which affords only a secondary means of access to abutting property and not intended for general traffic circulation.
Alteration (Structural): Any change other than incidental repairs which would prolong the life of the supporting members of a building such as the addition, removal, or alteration of bearing walls, columns, beams, girders, or foundations.
Animal Hospital: Any building or portion thereof designed or used for the care, boarding, grooming, observation, or treatment of animals, supervised by a licensed veterinarian.
Apartment: A room or suite of rooms with culinary facilities designed for or used as living quarters for a single family.
Apartment Hotel: A building designed for or containing both apartments and individual guest rooms or suites of rooms and apartments, wherein is maintained an inner lobby through which all tenants must pass to gain access to the apartments, and catering to permanent tenants and not transients, and which may furnish dining room service for the exclusive use of its tenants by previous arrangement and not to anyone who may apply.
Apartment House: See "Dwelling, Multiple."
Automobile Service Station: A building or structure used for the retail sale and dispensing of fuel, lubricants, tires, batteries, accessories and/or supplies, including installation and minor services customarily incidental thereto. Facilities for washing and for chassis and gear lubrication are permitted if enclosed in a building.
Automobile Wrecking Yard: An area outside of a building where motor vehicles are disassembled, dismantled, junked or wrecked, or where motor vehicles not in operable condition, or used parts of motor vehicles are stored.
Awning: A roof-like cover, which projects from the wall of a building or roof overhang and is supported by poles, cantilevering or bracketing from the face of the building.
Balcony: A railing-enclosed platform projecting from and supported by an outer wall of a building.
Bar: See "Lounge."
Bar-pits: The removal of gravel, shells, sand and topsoil materials from a lot or a part thereof. Synonym: Borrowpit.
Bay Window: A window forming a bay in a room which projects outward from the wall and is supported by its own foundation, in contrast to an oriel window which is similar but lacks foundation support. Synonym: Bow window.
Billboard: See "Sign, Advertising."
Buffer Strip (Greenbelt): A parcel of land which separates lands of differing uses. It is frequently unimproved except for landscaping and screening. Its purpose is to prohibit immediate adjacency of incompatible uses, such as commercially or industrially zoned land which is adjacent to residentially zoned land.
Buildable Area: The area of that part of the lot not included within the yards open spaces herein required.
Building: Any structure having a roof supported by columns or by walls and intended for the shelter, housing or enclosure of persons, animals or chattel.
Building Area: The total of areas taken on a horizontal plane at the mean grade level of the principal building and all accessory buildings exclusive of uncovered porches, terraces and steps.
Building, Height of: The vertical distance measured from the average elevation of the proposed finished grade at the front of the building to the highest point of the roof for the flat roofs, to the deck line of mansard roofs and to the mean height between eaves and ridge for gable, hip and gambrel roofs.
Cafeteria: A restaurant at which patrons serve themselves at a counter and take the food to the tables to eat.
Camp: A dwelling unit designed to house persons for short periods of time rather than indefinite periods as single-family dwellings.
Campers; Camping Trailers: The units are not designed for use as single-family dwellings, but rather as camps and shall include units which are self-propelled.
Car Wash: A lot on which motor vehicles are washed or waxed, either by the patron or by others, using machinery specially designed for the purpose.
Church: A building wherein persons regularly assemble for religious worship, which is used only for such purpose, and those accessory activities as are customarily associated therewith.
Clinic: A building or portion thereof designed for, constructed or under construction or alteration for, or use by two (2) or more physicians, surgeons, dentists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, or practitioners in related specialties, or a combination of persons in these professions.
Clubs: Private recreational buildings and areas operated by membership organizations for the benefit of their membership and not for gain. The term shall include country clubs and lodges. In conjunction with such a club, a dining room may be operated provided it is incidental to the activities of said club and is conducted for the benefit of the members thereof only, and further provided no sign is displayed advertising such activity.
Clustered Housing: A development of single-family dwellings situated so as to utilize the land as efficiently as possible to reduce the cost of utilities, services, and amenities and to eliminate the waste of standard yard requirements. It is intended that a developer locate dwellings, parking spaces, driveways, streets, easements, accessory buildings, etc., so as to utilize as much of the land as possible as common open recreational space.
Coastal Zone Site: An area designated in accordance with State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978 for Coastal Zone Management.
Commission: The St. Martin Parish Planning Commission.
Community-Based Recycling Facility: A type of facility for the recycling, recovering, compacting, shredding, and/or otherwise converting of nonputrescible solid waste to a useful form that is more convenient to handle for reshipment or for resale, subject to, but not limited to, glass, paper, and aluminum.
Community Shopping Center: A track of land improved with a coordinated group of retail buildings having a variety of types of stores and free parking, under single management or control, and catering to an entire community.
Compatible Use: A use which is capable of existing in harmony with other uses situated in its immediate vicinity.
Condominium: Any land or building and parts of a building thereon which would normally be used by all the occupants such as yards, foundations, basements, floors, walls, hallways, stairways, elevators, and all other related common elements together with individual ownership of a particular unit or apartment in such building.
Conforming Building, Structure, or Use: Any building or structure or use which complies with all the regulations of this ordinance or any amendment hereto for the zoning district in which such building or structure is located.
Court: An open space from the ground upward, which may or may not direct street access and around which is arranged a single building or a group or related buildings.
Culinary or Cooking Facilities: A space in a dwelling arranged, intended, designed, or used for the preparation of food for a family. Facilities may include a sink, stove, cabinets, and refrigerator, or any combination of these arranged in such space. A refrigerator alone shall not constitute culinary or cooking facilities under this definition.
Day Nursery: Any establishment providing care of four (4) or more children not members of the resident family during the day, but not overnight, including nurseries for children of working mothers, kindergartens, and nursery schools for children under the minimum age for admission to public or nonpublic schools, or for afterschool care of school children, and other establishments of a similar nature.
District: Any section of the total zoned area in which the zoning regulations are uniform.
Dormitory: A building intended or used principally for sleeping accommodations where such building is related to an educational or public institution, including religious institutions and hospitals.
Drive-in Establishment: An establishment of the "drive-in" type is one which accommodates patrons in automobiles from which the occupants may watch, purchase, bank, eat, etc. Such an establishment may also serve customers inside the building.
Duplex: See "Dwelling, Two-Family."
Dwelling: Any building which is designed for or used exclusively for residential purposes.
Dwelling, Multiple-Family: A building used or designed as a residence for two (2) or more families living independently of each other and doing their own cooking therein, including apartment houses, apartment hotels, flats and group houses.
Dwelling, Single-Family: A detached building designed for or occupied exclusively by one (1) family.
Dwelling, Two-Family: A dwelling designed for, constructed or under construction or alteration for, or occupied by two (2) families. This dwelling is commonly referred to as a duplex.
Dwelling Unit: A room or group of rooms occupied or intended to be occupied as separate living quarters by a single family or other group of persons living together as a household, or by a person living alone.
Extraction: The removal of natural resources except gravel, shells, sand, and topsoil materials from a lot or part thereof.
Family: One (1) or more persons who are related by blood or marriage living together and occupying a single housekeeping unit with single culinary facilities; or, a group of not more than four (4) persons living together by joint agreement and occupying a single housekeeping unit with single culinary facilities on a nonprofit, cost-sharing basis. The usual domestic servants residing on the premises shall be considered as part of the family.
Farm: Any parcel of land which is used for gain in the raising of agricultural products, livestock, poultry and dairy products. It includes necessary farm structures within the prescribed limits and the storage of equipment used.
Filling Station: Any building or land used for the dispensing, sale or offering for sale at retail of any automobile fuels, lubricants or tires, except that indoor car washing, minor motor adjustment and flat tire repair may be performed when incidental to the conduct of a filling station.
Floor Area: The sum of the gross horizontal areas of the several floors of the main building, not including the area of roofed porches, terraces, or breezeways. All dimensions shall be measured between exterior faces of the walls.
Frontage: The distance for which the front property line of the lot and the street right-of-way line are coincident.
Garage, Parking: A building, land or portion thereof designed or used for the temporary storage of motor-driven vehicles, with or without the retail dispensing, sale or offering for sale of motor fuels, lubricants and tires, or indoor car washing, minor motor adjustment and flat tire repair when such operations are incidental to the storage of motor-driven vehicles.
Garage, Private: An enclosed space for the storage of not more than three (3) motor vehicles, provided that no business, occupation or service is conducted for profit therein nor space therein for more than one (1) car is leased to a nonresident of the premises.
Garage, Public: A building, land or portions thereof, other than a private or storage garage, designed or used for equipping, servicing, repairing, hiring, selling or storing motor-driven vehicles.
Garage, Storage: An enclosed space for the storage of three (3) or more motor vehicles pursuant to previous arrangement and not to transients and at which automobile fuels and oils are not sold and motor vehicles are not equipped, repaired, hired, or sold.
Grade, Finished: The completed surfaces of lawns, walks, and roads brought to grades as shown on official plans or designs relating thereto.
Hazardous Waste: A solid waste or combination of solid wastes, which because of quantity, concentration, or physical, chemical, or infectious characteristics, may cause or significantly contribute to an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible, or incapacitating reversible illness; or pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health, or [the] environment when improperly treated, stored, transported, or disposed of, or] otherwise managed, as defined by the Hazardous Waste Management Plan as mandated by Act 334 of the 1978 Louisiana Legislature.
Hazardous Waste Facility: A facility which collects, separates, stores, disposes, treats or recovers hazardous waste which is not produced or manufactured on the site.
Helistop: An area of land, water, structure, or portion thereof used or intended to be used for the landing and takeoff of helicopters, providing no facilities for service basing of such aircraft are permitted.
Home Occupation: An accessory use of a service character customarily conducted within a dwelling by the residents thereof, which is clearly secondary to the use of the dwelling for living purposes and does not change the character thereof or have any exterior evidence of such secondary use other than a small nameplate and in connection therewith there is not involved the keeping of stock-in-trade. The office of a physician, surgeon, dentist, or other professional engaged in the purchase or sale of economic goods, including violin, piano, or other individual musical instrument instruction limited to a single pupil at a time, shall be deemed to be home occupations; and the occupations of dressmaker, milliner, seamstress or beauty parlors, each with not more than one (1) paid assistant, shall also be deemed to be home occupations. The following shall not be interpreted to be home occupations: Dancing instructions, band instrument instruction in groups, tearooms, tourists homes, real estate offices, convalescent homes, mortuary establishments and stores, trades, or businesses of any kind not herein excepted.
Hospital: Unless otherwise specified, the term "hospital" shall be deemed to include sanitarium, preventorium, clinic, rest home, nursing home, convalescent home, and any other place for the diagnosis, treatment, or other care of ailments, and shall be deemed to be limited to places for the diagnosis, treatment, or other care of human elements (ailments).
Hotel: A building containing rooms intended or designed to be used or which are used, rented, or hired out to be occupied or which are occupied for sleeping purposes by guests and transients and where only a general kitchen and dining room are provided within the building or in an accessory building.
Institution: A building or group of buildings designed or used for the nonprofit, charitable, or public-service purposes of providing board, lodging, and health care for persons aged, indigent, or infirm; or a building or group of buildings for the purpose of performing educational or religious services and offering board and lodging to persons enrolled for training.
Junkyard: The use of any lot, whether inside or outside a building for the storage, keeping, or abandonment of junk, including scrap metals or other scrap materials, or the dismantling, demolition, or abandonment of automobiles or other vehicles or machinery or parts thereof.
Kindergarten: A school for young children which attempts to cultivate in them the normal aptitude for exercise, play, observation, imitation, and socialization.
Laundromat: Business premises equipped with individual clothes washing machines for the use of retail customers, exclusive of laundry facilities provided as an accessory use in an apartment house or an apartment hotel.
Light Manufacturing: The manufacturing or processing of materials employing electricity or other unobjectionable motor power, utilizing hand labor or unobjectionable machinery or processes, and free from any objectionable odors, fumes, dirt, vibration, or noise.
Line (Right-of-Way): A line that is the boundary or dedication line of a street.
Line, Street: The dividing line between the street and the lot.
Lot: A parcel of land occupied or capable of being occupied by one (1) building, and the accessory buildings or uses customarily incident to it, including such open spaces as are required by this chapter.
Lot, Corner: A lot abutting upon two (2) or more streets at their intersection.
Lot, Depth of: A mean horizontal distance between the front and rear lot lines of a lot, measured in the general direction of its side lot lines.
Lot, Interior: A lot other than a corner lot.
Lot Lines: The lines bounding a lot as defined herein.
Lot of Record: A lot which is part of a subdivision, the map of which has been recorded in the office of the parish clerk of court; or a parcel of land which became legally established and defined by deed or act of sale on or before the adoption of this chapter.
Lot, Through: An interior lot having frontage on two (2) parallel or approximately parallel streets.
Lot, Width of: The mean lot width distance measured at right angles to the lot depth.
Lounge: An establishment wherein the main source of revenue excluding vending machines is the sale of alcoholic beverages which are customarily consumed on the premises.
Mobile Home: A detached single-family unit with the following characteristics:
(a)
Designed for residential occupancy, and containing sleeping accommodations, a flush toilet, a tub or shower bath, and kitchen facilities, with plumbing and electrical connections provided for attachments to outside systems; and/or
(b)
Designed to be transported after fabrication on its own wheels, or on flatbed or other trailers or detachable wheels; and/or
(c)
Arriving at the site where it is to be occupied as a dwelling, complete including major appliances and furniture, and ready for occupancy except for minor and incidental unpacking and assemble operations, location on foundation supports, connection to utilities and the like.
Mobile Home Park: Land used or intended to be used by three (3) or more mobile homes and/or house trailers.
Mobile Home Subdivision: A subdivision of land recorded with the St. Martin Parish Clerk of Court as a subdivision plat for the purpose of selling lots as mobile home sites with the appropriate rights-of-way for streets and easements.
Modular Unit: A factory fabricated transportable building unit designed to be used by itself or to be incorporated with similar units at a building site into a modular structure on a permanent foundation to be used for residential, commercial, educational, or industrial purposes.
Motel: An establishment which (1) is intended primarily for automobile transient guests; (2) provides sleeping accommodations in rooms for pay; (3) provides customary motel services.
Motor Vehicle: A vehicle which is self-propelled.
Nameplate: A sign indicating the name and address of a building or the name of an occupant thereof and the practice of a permitted occupation therein.
Neighborhood: An urban or suburban residential or commercial area exhibiting a fairly high degree of homogeneity as to housing, tenancy, income, and population characteristics. Neighborhoods are often outlined by physical barriers, such as a railroad track, streams, commercial or industrial development, hills, ravines, and bylines created by subdivision restrictions, or type or age of building development.
Neighborhood Shopping Center: A tract of land improved with a coordinated group of retail buildings with a limited variety of convenience goods and service facilities, free parking, under single ownership or control, and catering to a limited trade area (neighborhood).
Nightclub: See "Lounge."
Nonconforming Use: A structure or land lawfully occupied by a use that does not conform to the regulations of the district in which it is situated.
Nursery: A place for the propagation of small trees, shrubs, and plants.
Nursing Home: A facility designed and intended to provide nursing service on a continuing basis to persons, the majority of whom require such service under trained professional nurses or physicians, and for whom medical records are maintained.
Office (Business): The office of agents or consultants who offer business service of a competitive nature including, but not limited to, the following: Insurance, real estate, savings and loan associations, banks, mortgage companies, and similar businesses who advertise their services through various media, such as newspaper, radio, TV, magazines, and outdoor advertising.
Office (Professional): The office of a physician, accountant, surgeon, dentist, attorney, architect, urban and regional planning consultant, engineer, tax consultant, or other professional person who offers skilled services to his clients and who is not professionally engaged in the purchase or sale of economic goods.
Open Space: Any area of a lot, site, tract, or plot exclusive of structures, driveways, parking, or open storage areas, which is open to the sky.
Personal Service Shops: Business establishments such as barbershops, beauty shops, chiropody, massage, or similar personal service shops.
Planning Commission: The official planning and zoning body of the Parish of St. Martin, Louisiana, so designated by the St. Martin Parish [Council].
[Parish Council]: St. Martin Parish [Council], governing authority of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana.
Principal Use: The primary purpose of function that a lot or structure serves or is intended to serve.
Property Lines: The lines bounding a lot, as defined herein.
Restaurant: A retail establishment offering food or beverages, or both, for consumption on the premises. Restaurants do not include barrooms, night clubs, or lounges.
Retail Manufacturing: Baking, confectionery, dressmaking, dyeing, laundry, dry cleaning, printing, tailoring, upholstering, and similar establishments, and businesses similar and more objectionable [in] character.
Roominghouse: A residential building or portion thereof containing sleeping rooms which will accommodate persons who are not members of the keeper's family.
Sanitarium: An institution for the recuperation and treatment of victims of physical or mental disorders.
School, Business: Private[ly] owned schools offering instruction in accounting, secretarial work, business administration, the fine or illustrative arts, trades, dancing, music and similar subjects.
School, Private: Privately owned schools having curriculum essentially the same as ordinarily given in a public elementary or high school.
Shopping Center: A group of three (3) or more retail stores, planned and designed as a single unit of construction.
Shopping Mall: A shopping center in which all business establishments are oriented into a common pedestrian passageway(s), whether covered or open.
Sign: Any device for visual communication that is used for the purpose of bringing the subject thereof to the attention of the public, but not including any flag, badge, insignia, or bulletin board of any government or government agency, or of any civic, charitable, religious, patriotic, fraternal, or similar organization.
Sign, Advertising: A sign which directs attention to a business, commodity, service or entertainment conducted, sold or offered elsewhere than on the premises and only incidentally on the premises if at all. (Billboard - larger than 120 sq. ft.)
Sign, Business: A sign which directs attention to a business or profession conducted on the premises. A "For Sale" or a "To Let" sign relating to the property on which it is displayed shall be deemed a business sign. (Sign equal to or less than 120 sq. ft.)
Solid Waste: Any garbage, refuse, sludge from a waste treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained gaseous material resulting from mining, industrial, commercial, and agricultural operations, and from community activities, but does not include solid or dissolved material in domestic sewage, or solid or dissolved materials in irrigation return flows or industrial discharges which are point sources subject to permit under section 402 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended (86 Stat. 880), or source, special nuclear, or by-product material as defined by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (68 Stat. 923).
Solid Waste Site: A site for the disposal of solid waste excluding hazardous waste.
Stable (Private): An accessory building for the housing of horses or mules owned by a person living on the premises, which horses or mules are not for hire or sale.
Stable (Public): Any stable for the housing of horses or mules operated for remuneration, hire, sale, or stabling.
Street: A public or private thoroughfare which affords the principal means of access to abutting property.
Structural Alteration: Any change in the physical structure of a building or structure.
Structure: A combination of materials other than a building to form a construction that is safe and stable and includes among other things stadiums, platforms, radio towers, sheds, storage bins, fences, and display signs.
Theater, Drive-in: An open lot or part thereof, with its appurtenant facilities, devoted to the showing of moving pictures or theatrical productions, on a paid admission basis, to patrons seated in automobile or on outdoor seats.
Tourist Court: A group of attached or detached buildings designed, constructed, or under construction or alteration for guest rooms or dwelling units intended primarily for automobile transients, each unit having a separate entrance opening out-of-doors or into a foyer, with parking space approximately located on the lot for use by guests of the court, operation of such court to be supervised by a person in charge at all hours. Tourist courts include auto courts, motels, motor hotels, and motor inns.
Tourist Home: A dwelling in which overnight accommodations are provided or offered for transient guests for compensation.
Townhouse: A single-family dwelling forming one of a group of series of three (3) or more attached single-family dwellings separated from one another by common walls without doors, windows, or other provisions for human passage or visibility through such walls from basement or cellar to roof; and having roofs which may extend from one of the dwelling units to another.
Trade School: A school offering preponderant instruction in the technical, commercial or trade skills, such as real estate schools, business colleges, electronic schools, automotive and aircraft technicians schools and similar commercial establishments operated by a nongovernmental organization.
Trailer: Any vehicle, covered or uncovered, used for living, sleeping, or recreational purposes, having no foundation other than wheels; may be equipped with wheels or other devices for transporting the vehicle from place to place, whether by motive power, or other means. The term "trailer" shall include camp car and house car.
Travel Trailer Park: An area providing spaces where one (1) or more auto trailers can be or are intended to be parked, with flush toilet and bathing facilities provided on the site.
Use (Principal): The main use of land or buildings as distinguished from a subordinate or accessory use.
Wholesale Establishment: A business establishment engaged in selling to retailers or jobbers rather than consumers.
Yard, Front: A yard extending across the front of a lot between the side lot lines, and being the required horizontal distance between the street or place line and the maximum permissible main building. On corner lots, the front yard shall be provided facing the street upon which the lot has its lesser dimension.
Yard, Rear: A yard extending across the rear of a lot between the side lot lines, and being the required minimum horizontal distance between the rear lot line and the rear of maximum permissible main building. On both corner lots and interior lots, the rear yard shall in all cases be at the opposite end of the lot from the front yard.
Yard, Side: A yard between the main building and the side lot lines and extending from the required front yard to the required rear yard and being the required horizontal distance between a side lot line and the side of the maximum permissible main building.