EASTHAM — The owners of a 733-square-foot house are asking the planning board to allow them to convert it into an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) and build a new 4,081-square-foot house on the same lot. Some residents say the plan would irrevocably change a neighborhood of mostly small houses.
Alan Sproul and Elizabeth Halsey-Sproul of Middletown, N.Y., the owners of 85 Thumpertown Road, are offering a carrot and a stick in their application to the planning board, which must approve a site plan for the construction of any house larger than 3,000 square feet. The carrot is turning the existing three-bedroom cottage into a one-bedroom ADU that would have to be a year-round rental.
But the Sprouls propose to add a three-bedroom house, shed, and garage totaling another 4,814 square feet on the same 0.92-acre lot. That would be more than three times the size of the average house on Thumpertown Road, where currently only two of 26 houses are larger than 2,000 square feet and nine are under 1,000 square feet, according to assessor’s records.
The planning board is charged with determining whether new construction fits into the neighborhood. The site-plan approval process is to encourage “construction that is reasonably sensitive to the scale, size and massing of buildings,” according to Eastham’s zoning bylaw.
“It is much larger than the largest home on the street,” said John Tropeano of 75 Thumpertown Road at a Nov. 16 planning board meeting. “It is two times the size.”
“I think the house looks great,” said Jim Kivlehan, a planning board member. “It is just too big for the neighborhood.”
Eastham currently has no limit on the size of houses, so as long as the standards for height, setbacks, and other zoning laws are met, site-plan approval comes down to a subjective call by the planning board. And because these decisions are subjective, they put the town in a vulnerable position if either the applicants or their neighbors feel aggrieved.
At the same Nov. 16 meeting, the planning board reviewed another proposal for a new house that would be larger than 5,000 square feet (including the garage) on Bridge Road.
It is a trend — new buyers turning cottages into mansions — that has prompted some towns to put house-size limits into their bylaws. Both Truro and Wellfleet have imposed 3,600-square-foot limits on house construction. In Truro, having a larger lot gives you slightly more square footage by right. And Wellfleet’s size limit applies only to houses in the Cape Cod National Seashore.
The Eastham Task Force on Residential Zoning is now gathering data to craft a bylaw imposing some kind of house-size limit, said Mary Nee, chair of the task force. The data collection includes combing through the paper applications where homeowners have asked to build structures larger than 3,000 square feet, as well as looking at how many such houses already exist in town and at the sizes of all the town’s lots.
Nee said 85 to 90 percent of Eastham’s lots are under 40,000 square feet, and a great many are much smaller — 10,000 or 20,000 square feet.
“Eastham is very dense,” she said.
Her task force is trying to come up with a way to set different house-size limits for lots that are 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 square feet.
“We do need guardrails,” said Nee, adding that the real estate market encourages construction of larger homes. Eastham’s housing stock is old, and redevelopment is inevitable, she said. “What is the sweet spot?” Nee asked.
Nee said she is hoping the task force will have all the data it needs by the end of January to enable it to get an article ready for the May 6 annual town meeting. If not, no size-limit bylaw will go on the books in 2023.
The Thumpertown Road application raises another issue: How can towns be sure that ADUs will really be year-round rentals? What if a property owner builds an ADU and then stops renting it year-round?
Eastham requires annual rental inspections, so town officials would theoretically know. In such a case, the homeowner would have to remove the kitchen from the rental unit, said Town Planner Paul Lagg. And if the cottage is bigger than what zoning allows for a guest house or artist studio — and the one proposed on Thumpertown Road is — the homeowner would need a variance from the zoning board of appeals or face fines, Lagg said.
Eastham’s ADU bylaw was adopted in 2019. Currently, 11 ADUs have been permitted, and Lagg said no violations of the bylaw have occurred. But the neighbors on Thumpertown Road are concerned about that possibility.
In a letter to the planning board, Kathleen and Marc Bussiere of 65 Thumpertown Road stated that, with the office space, a bonus room, and the cottage, the Sprouls could potentially rent 85 Thumpertown Road as a six-bedroom property.
“This project could be the green light to irrevocably changing the neighborhood,” their letter stated.
The planning board will continue reviewing the Sproul application in January.
