On Brookline

Recent proceedings before Brookline’s Zoning Board of Appeals have revealed a rather chilling development concerning the rights of property owners. A new tack taken by lawyers for developers is to challenge the standing (i.e., the right of a party to bring a complaint) of abutters to the property under development.

And it may be working.

It’s happened with the obviously illegal development at 71 Spooner Road (see previous posts). And it’s likely to happen again on Thursday evening, as the ZBA rules on another obviously illegal development known as Longyear at Fisher Hill (see previous posts).

Despite being presented evidence that direct abutters to new construction at this mammoth project would suffer serious financial harm, there’s every indication that ZBA Chair Diane Gordon will once again be mesmerized by the legal argumentation of the developer’s lawyer Jeffrey P. Allen and not let that evidence in.

Is stiff-arming abutters in the spirit of Massachusetts’ Zoning law? What does it mean when a person who stands to lose the most from a project (that by all appearances is too big for the site it’s on) has no option other than the courts? It means we are lorded over by cronies.

It’s easy for people to shove development down the throats of others, as often does Gordon. But bear in mind, that when foot traffic picked up around her Ivy Street home due to increased condo units coming on line, Gordon was instrumental in having the street that people used to get to the T closed and blocked by a fence.

Nothing like commuters passing by to ruin a neighborhood.