Mt. Lebanon's five-member municipal planning board unanimously passed a motion Tuesday to give the Mt. Lebanon School District conditional preliminary land development approval for its $113.2 million high school renovation project.

Among the conditions of the approval is that the school district obtain a favorable resolution from Allegheny Common Pleas Court, which is reviewing the district's appeal of a zoning hearing board decision.

The school district requested earlier this year that the zoning hearing board grant variances for maximum lot coverage and number of parking spaces, arguing that the new design was less nonconforming than the current building configuration, which was built before the adoption of the relevant zoning requirements.

Zoning guidelines require that maximum lot coverage is 50 percent, and that the property have 528 parking spaces. The school currently has lot coverage of 54.57 percent and 502 parking spaces.

Under the proposed high school design, the lot coverage would drop to 54.43 percent and the number of parking spaces would increase to 505.

The school district said Tuesday that the addition of more permeable surface would make lot coverage 49.79 percent.

The other conditions of the approval include compliance with the engineer's and traffic engineer's review comments and approval from the Mt. Lebanon commission for conditional use in a residential zone. The district also must get a waiver from the commission for the planting of small evergreens and ground cover not on the required plant list and must provide an annual report to the municipality certifying that pervious pavement has been maintained and tested.

Prior to the vote on preliminary approval, school district representatives discussed traffic, building and site changes made to the renovation plan in response to the issues raised at three previous presentations to the board.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.