Moore Real Estate Holdings in court documents says Dayton’s Board of Zoning Appeals wrongly denied the continuation of the property’s grandfathered junkyard use.
The company also says the board should not have rejected its application for an operating certificate for a junkyard at the site, which is about a mile northeast of Dayton Children’s, and just south of the vacant former Valleycrest landfill.
Members of the zoning appeals board said city staff and the zoning administrator found evidence that the property stopped operating as a lawful junkyard years ago.
The site was a salvage yard in the 1970s, and Mahaffey’s Auto Salvage was the main occupant until the company was dissolved more than a decade ago, city staff said.
Board members said they think the lawful junkyard use ceased after Mahaffey’s went out of business.
But an attorney representing Moore Real Estate Holdings said the property was sold and purchased as a junkyard, and its use in that capacity never stopped, even if the previous owners did not have proper licenses.
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