On June 4, the Planning Board ruled that the disputed development of Lucy Nesbeda’s property at 55 and 57 Oak Hill Road could proceed. The final settlement allows the construction of an additional house to continue, while addressing neighbors’ privacy concerns by requiring the owner to help pay for visual screening to block the sightline between the planned driveway and the neighbors’ house.
At the board’s April 23 meeting, engineer Neil Gorman of David E. Ross Associates had presented a plan on Nesbeda’s behalf to add an additional house to her property. The Planning Board has jurisdiction over lot changes that do not require special exemptions (those fall under the Zoning Board of Appeals), and it is responsible for overseeing public hearings on such changes and arbitrating disagreements between owners and abutters. The 22-acre property currently consists of two lots of roughly 2 and 20 acres, each of which contains a house. The larger lot is a hammerhead lot that accesses the road via a long driveway that passes along the property line, which is marked by a stone wall. The development plan redraws the property lines within the 22 acres, forming three lots of 4, 8, and 9 acres, allowing the construction of a new house on the new lot, which is the farthest back from the road. The plan calls for an extension of the driveway that currently serves the second lot, making it a shared driveway that continues along the property line to serve both hammerhead lots.
While other minor issues were raised, the focus of the April 23 meeting was the concerns of abutters, especially the Peters family, whose property is directly adjacent to the expanded driveway. The Peters house is about 50 feet from the stone wall marking the property divide, and a previous owner cleared all vegetation between the house and the wall. Because the land was undeveloped, this close proximity posed no issue in the past, but the addition of the driveway serving the new house would pass very close to their house and would result in a direct sightline between the house and cars traveling up the driveway. Neighbors requested that the planned driveway be relocated farther from the property line, but the meeting ended without a decision on the issue.
Driveway okayed, plantings to come
By the June 4 meeting, the owner had already addressed the other concerns of the Planning Board but had not made any change to the proposed driveway location. Although Gorman admitted it would be possible to move the driveway farther from the property line, he said the proposed location made the most sense from both an engineering and marketing standpoint and developing the property according to her own plan is the right of the owner. He further pointed out that Nesbeda had not complained when, in the 1990s, the neighboring property, now owned by the Peters family, had been developed in a near mirror image of the plan now being proposed, including putting a driveway directly adjacent to the property line and clearing all the trees.
Robin Peters responded by noting that the cutting had been done by a previous owner, saying, “Why should we have to assume the burden of putting back what we already have?”
Board members agreed that neighbors should not be able to force Nesbeda to move the planned driveway, but they were also sympathetic to the Peterses’ plight, with member Rich Maiore saying, “There were extensive alternatives that she chose not to pursue, as is her right, but that means she has a responsibility to help restore the privacy that folks have a right to have.”
The board decided that the owner and the abutters should develop and agree on a plan for new plantings on the Peterses’ side of the property line to maintain some amount of privacy, and it continued the meeting until such a plan is brought forward. Such a plan may be some time in the making, as Gorman pointed out that they currently do not know how much vegetation will need to be removed to put in the driveway as planned.
