GUILDERLAND —The zoning board here approved, 5 to 0, an application by Paul Gait of 6899 Dunnsville Rd. to build a barn in his front yard — actually across Dunnsville Road; his property spans both sides of the road — that will house an office and showroom for his business, which involves inventing, manufacturing, and distributing lacrosse equipment.

Gait and two employees will work there. He is leasing a space within the Northeastern Industrial Park for his operations and distribution, but told the board that he wants to have the showroom in the barn because “it’s not very attractive to bring customers over to the industrial park.”

He told The Enterprise that there will not be many customers visiting, and that he generally has “under half a dozen buyers in a year.” He wants to have the home office there — which will also be where he works on new product design — so that he can work long hours and not be far from home.

Gait plans to build his home on the lot, across the street; his lot is bisected by Dunnsville Road. He told the board and several neighbors who had come to the meeting that he wants to make the barn look attractive and “as much like a barn as possible,” to mesh with the character of the area. He pointed out that he has an interest in making sure that it looks nice, since it will be visible from his home.

Gait formerly leased space in Corporate Circle but is moving his operations-and-distribution facility to a 20,000-square-foot space in the Northeastern Industrial Park, where he says he will have 11 employees. Those employees will sometimes gather at the Dunnsville Road office for company meetings, Gait said.

He told The Enterprise that he also has factories in Asia and a warehouse in Canada. He holds 28 patents for sporting-goods equipment.

Several neighbors spoke, one expressing concern about commercial activity in a rural area, another saying that she has no issues with the barn, and a third asking if the driveway and the parking lot would be paved or gravel; Gait said that the lot of about 100 by 100 feet would be gravel at first, but that eventually he would like to have it paved.

The board voted unanimously to grant Gait a special-use permit for a Home Occupation II and a variance for an accessory structure in a front yard. Board Chairman Thomas Remmert explained that everything in front of a home is considered within the front yard, even if it is, in the case of a bisected lot, across the street.

Two cell towers approved

The town’s zoning board on June 21 also approved separate plans for a cell tower on Hurst Road and a microcell tower near the corner of routes 20 and 155. Both are meant to provide stronger cell coverage in their areas:

— Microcell tower at 2093 Western Ave.: The tower on Route 20 is a utility pole 45 feet tall, with a microcell antenna on top with its center point at 47.5 feet. It is to be across from Hamilton Square, in an area zoned Business Non-Retail Professional that already has many utility poles, many of them more than 40 feet in height, the zoning board was told.

This tower will provide additional wireless network bandwidth and improved performance to the area in and immediately surrounding Western Avenue in the hamlet of Westmere, according to the application submitted by Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless.

It will target the “traffic hotspot” area of the mix of apartment and office buildings, restaurants, and shopping and retail plazas nearby, the application says. Without this additional coverage, the macro cell site currently serving the area — a 100-foot tower at 5293 Foundry Rd. — is anticipated to reach maximum capacity this year and become overloaded, providing reduced performance to Verizon customers in the area.

The tower will be unmanned and will need only occasional maintenance, the application says.

The applicant will need to put up a bond for its removal, with Delaware Engineering, working for the town, and the applicant deciding the exact amount.

— Monopole at 5075 Hurst Road: This is to be a 120-foot tower and related equipment shelter, contained within a six-foot-high chain-link fence and barbed wire fencing, within a two-acre parcel.

The area is zoned RA3, or Rural Agricultural with a minimum lot size of three acres.

This project will also require a bond for its removal.

The zoning board granted a special-use permit and variance with conditions: the applicant must negotiate with the town, based on a request from the town’s IT representative, about allowing the town to place its own equipment at about the 70-foot level; the applicant will also work with the town to provide appropriate landscaping; and the applicant will notify the town at least 30 days before discontinuing the tower’s use, and, in that event, will be responsible for removing the tower and any related equipment within four months.

Other business

In other business the board:

— Voted 5 to 0 to grant a variance to Amy King of 2 King Street to replace an existing deck with one slightly larger. “Decks like this are common in the neighborhood,” said Remmert.

— Voted 5 to 0 to grant a variance to Louis Coluccio of 20 Ayre Drive for a shed within two feet of an existing property line. Coluccio told the board that his original shed had rotted and he had bought a kit for a larger shed without realizing he needed a variance. Coluccio brought a letter from Rachel Bailey, the next-door neighbor whose property is two feet from the shed, in which she wrote that she has no issues with the shed; and

— Considered a request by Vision Planning Consultants to put in a 16-by-32-foot swimming pool at 734 Walden’s Pond Rd. The property is owned by Timothy Owens. The pool would be within 100 feet of a watercourse and within the angle of repose. Owens also plans to put in a putting green within the safe building line. The board continued the matter until its next meeting, scheduled for July 5, and asked the applicant in the meantime to meet with Delaware Engineering, telling him, “What we’re looking for is a reassurance from an engineer that it’s not going to all slide down the hill into the pond.”