The Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals opened a public hearing on December 8 into a plan to build an 80×204-foot steel building with 10 separate bays and 16,320 square feet of floor space at 19 Country Road. But the board could not even come close to rendering a decision.
Neighbors who are so concerned about the scale of the plan that they hired an attorney, expressed objections that led the petitioners Robert and Christine Murphy to request a continuance to January 26.
The Murphys said they were blindsided by their neighbors’ reaction and wanted more time to be better prepared, including contacting their own attorney. They said the neighbors seemed okay with their plan to build a garage when the couple first discussed it with them. “We had no idea they were upset with this plan,” Christine Murphy said.
Robert Murphy started the hearing by noting the first of his two requests before the Zoning panel is for a special permit to rent this garage space to people who are already storing items on his large property. He would fill the other parts of the garage with his own equipment and his race cars so he could store them and work on them in the winter. His other request before the panel is a variance to run his trucking company with up to three employees there.
Attorney Michael Kennefick, representing several of the abutters, countered that the proposed use does not belong where it is being planned. The site is in a residential-agricultural zone, and it is surrounded by neighbors. There is a junkyard that is an isolated, non-agricultural use in that area, but Murphy’s trucking company is an unlawful operation in that location, Kennefick asserted.
To buttress his argument, Kennefick noted a use approved by the ZBA “must be in harmony with the intent of the town bylaw. The number of neighbors here proves this would not be in harmony.”
Abutter Amy Bennett, 9 County Road, said she and her husband Kevin have a “medically delicate,” wheelchair-bound child. “I’m concerned about what this does to all our lives,” she said. “We have a brand-new deck. From it, we see wrecked vehicles and all the trucks. There’ll be more noise; more trucks will come and go. I never thought I’d be here to stop an industrial use in a residential area. And it will devalue our property. This is really too much.”
Christine Murphy said she had thought she and her husband had a great relationship with the neighbors. She said they have helped them with their own projects. They are cleaning up their property that the neighbors see from their yards. The new building, she said, “is going to block looking at that junkyard.”
Board Chairman Thomas Flynn encouraged the Murphys to talk to the neighbors as well as their lawyer before January 26.
In other action, the Zoning panel approved a setback-requirement variance at 3 County Road to allow the building of a 20×16-foot deck closer than the required 40 feet from the side setback. Board members acknowledged in their motion that the size of the house lot and the location of the septic system would make it a hardship to place the deck elsewhere on the lot.
The next meeting of the Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals is scheduled for Thursday, December 22, at 7:15 pm in the Town Hall meeting room, 1 Constitution Way, Rochester.
Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals
By Michael J. DeCicco