photo by BC Heights
The next chapter in the saga of the historic Gershom Hyde House at 29 Greenwood Rd opened this week in Middlesex County Court. The developer is suing the City of Newton as well as individual staff members, Historic Commission members and the mayor over their handling of the project.
The developer bought the property in Jan 2021 and began work with plans for partial demolition and rebuilding signed off on by the Newton Historic Commission and Inspectional Services Department. In Feb 2021 when the developer removed the gable end of the main houses, the City cried foul, issued a Stop Work Order and halted the project saying that the developer had exceeded the scope of what was allowed under the plans.
After some back and forth between the developer and the city, the Stop Work Order was lifted and work on the project resumed. Once again, in April the city issued another Stop Work Order, shut the project down and began fining the developer $300/day for overstepping the allowed plans.
SInce April 2021 the project has been in limbo. The developer went before the Historic Commission multiple times over the next year and a half in an attempt to draft new construction plans that they would sign off on. This past August the commission voted unanimously to deny the developer’s petition for the project.
At this point the developer has a shell of a building, +$200,000 in fines that are growing by the day and no path forward.
This week the developer filed suit against the City Of Newton, the mayor, various staff members and members of the Historic Commission. The suit claims that the city engaged in “gangster tactics incited by city officials and a roving angry mob of Newtonites that are hell bent on destroying the plaintiff;s property rights”. Here’s the developers legal complaint.
One entertaining detail of all this is that during discovery they seem to have subpoenaed everyone’s emails, and they are quoted throughout the complaint. I’d say that here is clearly at least one person who’s now regretting sending at least one of those emails
Note: The broken link to the legal complaint has now been fixed
Hopefully the developer learned that it’s wise to do a thorough home inspection before you buy a property like this and not in the middle of a construction project
Jackson Joe – Read the legal complaint, it’s quite entertaining. A missing home inspection wasn’t the issue.
Lucia I did read about half of the complaint and it seemed obvious that the developer found out many defects and obstacles after he had purchased the house and he was trying to renegotiate the terms of his permit due to hardship. What was your take? BTW the part of the complaint that I read never mentioned any detailed inspection that was done prior to purchase or engineering reports that were done prior to construction. Did you see anything about inspections prior to construction?
Actually sounds to me like the dev was doing anything he could to meet the city needs. I read this as negligence by the city and the house as being unsalvageable.
Dev was going to tear it down anyway, the rot only helped his case!
This was a poor project choice for the developer, as such they should not be punished for trying to rebuild a broken, dilapidated property. This property should have been left to crumble on it’s own.
Councilor Lipof acknowledged via email to his fellow council members that “[t]here are times whether an historic home will be allowed to be completely taken down as the home is just not salvageable”. ….
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Hax Holmes: “John Lojek is an ass, let’s just get that out there. Nothing is ever ISD’s fault. Don’t worry about his comments.”
Ms. Bentley responded stating, “Boy, am I going to miss you.” Hax Holmes
followed up moments later, writing: “Yeah, don’t share that email, please. Forgot this was the city computer. “
When the building is going have all new interior and exterior finishes and the framing will be completely covered why do we care if its original or not? In the end this is and will be private property, how does the community benefit from now having to pay legal fees for this lawsuit.
Yes the developer made promises to try and save the structure, but at what point is it just too far gone? Could anyone have saved the structure and at what cost and why bother at that point?
Separately the house on Chestnut that fell down in August of 2020, again a developer was trying to save an old frame to cover it up in new finishes inside and out. Apparently the roof pitch was not to the historic commissions liking and the builder was required to rip the brand new roof off and change the pitch only slightly. What an absolute waste of time, materials and housing. The house spent at least a year vacant while that decision was rendered. I honestly can only tell the difference because I saw them change the pitch, the end result looks nearly identical to what was there previously.
How much is this lawsuit going to cost the City? And really if you read those City of Newton Emails – I think the City will end up paying the Developer.
And it seems that the rules are different depending on who the developer is in the City of Newton. Mark Development was allowed to tear down buildings so that he can pay less on taxes and not build anything and this developer is fined daily by the City.