a. Generally

Euclid treated zoning as a legislative judgment deserving substantial deference. Variances are more individualized decisions about specific parcels, and they raise key structural issues: How can an individualized determination avoid arbitrariness? How should courts review these individualized determinations – should they defer to zoning boards as much as they do with overall zoning schemes? 

Missouri law empowers city boards of adjustment, “where there are practical difficulties or unnecessary hardship in the way of carrying out the strict letter of [a zoning ordinance], to vary or modify the application of ... such ordinance... so that the spirit of the ordinance shall be observed, public safety and welfare secured and substantial justice done.” Mo.Rev.Stat. § 89.090(3) (1998). This type of provision is common across the nation, though there is some state-to-state variation. The basic requirements for a variance in any state are (1) a showing of individualized hardship and (2) a lack of interference with the basic goals of the zoning scheme. Both must be shown; even Zoning 61 

substantial hardship is insufficient if granting a variance would do significant harm to the purposes of the zoning. In such a case, only a constitutional challenge or a federal law overriding local zoning could potentially allow the proposed use. 

Zoning authorities’ basic hostility to variances is well expressed by the Missouri Municipal League, Planning and Zoning Procedures for Missouri Municipalities (Sept. 2004): 

The most common situation in which variances are sought is where a developer divides his land into the greatest possible number of lots, barely meeting minimum standards, and then seeks permission to create substandard lots out of the remaining land. The subdivision regulations are intended to set forth minimum standards for development, not maximums, and the intent of the regulation is to use the remnants of land to increase lot sizes rather than create substandard lots. When variances are granted allowing substandard lots, it weakens the legal position of the city and its regulations and makes it difficult to defend its subdivision standards. 

(While there is little systematic empirical evidence about actual board practice, the litigated variance cases tend not to have this “most common” fact pattern.) 

Procedure. Most jurisdictions have a formal process setting out the deadlines and providing guidance to applicants on what they need to show to get a variance. See, e.g., St. Louis Board of Zoning Adjustment, Citizen’s Guide to the Board of Zoning Adjustment Variance Process (n.d.). By contrast, the city of Ladue has no formal variance procedure at all. Instead, an applicant must seek a permit, and after the permit is denied, the City of Ladue Building Department sends the applicant a formal denial letter with Zoning Board of Adjustment instructions for an appeal. 

See http://www.l-a-k-e.org/blog/2013/09/dollar-general-teramore-development-glpc-2013-08-26.html / https://perma.cc/Q9B5-HWGP  for a detailed recap of a zoning hearing and many more pictures