Good Neighbors
- From Cape Cod Times
- Chuck Carey
Let’s say you buy a house next-door to a commercially
zoned lot and you knew it was commercially zoned when
you bought it but you bought it anyway. Ten years later,
they develop, or upgrade the buildings on, the lot.
Do you complain and place every obstacle you can to
the business people involved ? Or do you admit that
you made a certain choice and accept the fact that
these are the repercussions ?
There’s a growing number of recent cases where
the bad neighbor has turned out to be the abutting
homeowner who complains fiercely to the powers that
be and, like the furbish lousewart, a famous worm that
stopped a power plant from being built, blocks the
commercial landowner from proceeding within the rights
granted under the zoning by-law.
All this is going to sound very strange to you since
you’ve been fed a steady diet of media which values
all else in the world, including insects, higher than
the business person. Business people have become the
lowest of politically incorrect life forms. A sort
of human junk fish. They are overtaxed, over legislated,
over controlled and taken for granted. In a time when
the competition is merciless in almost every category
of business, the town raises the permit fees.
Dennis - A legal permit granted by the town to rejuvenate
a complex with rental boats, restaurant, mini-golf
and retail is challenged by a distant property owner
who happens to live on Rt. 28 who takes advantage of
the right to appeal for any reason within 21 days from
issuance. The homeowner’s property does not abut
the complex but fronts directly on Rt. 28 on the opposite
side from the complex about 50 yards away. The project
is stalled and the restaurant / mini-golf sits closed
for the season.
West Yarmouth - A homeowner with a property one lot
back from Rt. 28 complains under the same 21 day appeal
period when a permit is granted for a commercial operation.
The appeal has no specifics. The result - with the
season approaching the business people simply pay the
man off. He drops his appeal. The project goes forward.
Sound fair to you ?
How about Home Depot where the neighbors who bought
when the site was dormant but commercially / industrially
zoned now rise up over the expansion plan.
Consider this - over the past 10 years there has been
far more residential development on the Cape than commercial.
But on and on residential building goes at 115 homes
per month (see Capetrends 1996) without regard for
the same issues that are applied to new or upgrading
commercial enterprises - traffic, water, etc.
Are we having a paradigm shift or are we just hindering
the ability to earn a living in our effort to make
a Norman Rockwell village ?
Some people on the Cape (alot of them were here first)
still need to work to feed the kids. A lot of them
use a business or commercial property as a tool to
that end.
