Bust out the pitchforks and torches

I’m generally a trusting person. So even though the new commercial building that’s going up behind us seemed a little on the close side, I figured it was probably kosher. I mean, surely the city enforces its own building codes. Surely the builder would stick to the plans he submitted to the city. Surely our homeowners’ association would make a stink about any possible transgressions.

Wrong on all counts.

This whole sordid affair (or at least our involvement in it) started yesterday morning as I got in the car to go to work. One of my neighbors quickly pulled his car out in the middle of the court and blocked my driveway so I couldn’t pull out. Fearing the worst, I walked over to his car to see what all the hub-bub was about.

Over the next twenty minutes, we stood in the middle of our street and he filled me in on his battle over the building behind us. He had sued the developer, resulting in the project being delayed a couple of months, and was now contemplating either trying to settle or take the case to court.

It turns out that the building is being built too close to our property line – way too close. Our local building code says the distance between the back of their building and our property line should be at least twice the height of the highest point (front) of their structure. Fine, great, whatever. Except they used the much lower back of the structure when drawing up their plans. And the city approved it. And the developer didn’t even pretend to stick to the blueprints, building about twelve feet closer than his already-wrong limit. And the city approved it.

The developer also planned to put big honking air-conditioning units on the roof, which would add to the height of his building and increase the theoretically required space between his building and my property line. The plans also called for ugly sheet metal siding on the rear of the building, which was a gross violation of the statue requiring him to blend the visible portion of his property in with the surrounding residential neighborhood.

After basically harassing the developer and the city planner’s office for a couple of months, my neighbor has succeeded in winning some concessions. The air conditioning units are going on the side of the building and the back portion will be covered with wood planking. Also, it looks like the developer is going to have to plant and maintain a ‘green wall’ of tall trees between his building and the existing wall at the back of our property.

Like my neighbor said, the city’s not going to make him tear the whole thing down and rebuild it thirty feet to the west, so this is probably about all we could expect to get. The whole thing just angers me.

As far as the developer is concerned, he’s out to get his project built in the quickest, cheapest manner possible. I’m not shocked to learn that he would bend or even contempletely disregard certain ordinances to get that done.

My real anger is directed towards the city. Instead of enforcing the existing ordinances, they seem to be intent on burying the whole thing as quickly and discretely as possible. My neighbor has letters from city officials acknowledging that multiple building codes have been violated and that city inspectors were wrong for signing off on all of it, but they’re not going to do anything about it. Quite frankly, if my neighbor hadn’t been so nosy, the whole thing would have gone unnoticed by the city. Maybe that’s why two of our three “development at any costs” council members didn’t get reelected in the last round of elections.

And our homeowners’ association? They placed a call to the city and decided to not pursue the matter after they got a blanket “it’s all good” from whoever answered the phone. Completely worthless. Thanks for nothing.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to the building going up behind me. I knew that land was zoned for commercial development and quite frankly, the building has been great for blocking out some of the traffic noise in the area. I just wish that it could have been built in compliance with the reasonable ordinances already in place. And I wish our city government could show even the slightest bit of competency in enforcing its own building codes.

Oh well. At least they’re not building a nuclear reactor or waste processing facility back there. Yet.