EASTHAM — The owners of a property overlooking Cape Cod Bay are looking to join a growing trend in what was once a neighborhood of modest cottages along Shurtleff Road.
Michael Nargi and Kerri Picard, who live in Southwick, have submitted a plan to raze an existing one-story house, built in 1946, and a detached two-story garage with a guest house above, built in 1994, at 435 Shurtleff. They plan to replace the two buildings with a two-story house with an attached two-car garage and guest room above. The living area in the house and guest quarters now total 1,828 square feet; the rebuild would have about 3,200 square feet of living area.
Nargi and Picard have also proposed adding stairs from the house to the beach below and installing a “plunge pool” in a planned patio.
The project requires site plan approval to construct a new dwelling because the proposed lot coverage will exceed 3,000 square feet. Currently, the site coverage is 2,728 square feet, with a site coverage ratio of 7.8 percent. The proposed site coverage would be 3,896 square feet, just over 11 percent, based on the area of contiguous uplands, which is 34,896 square feet. A town bylaw that comes into play during the planning board’s review limits site coverage to 3,900 square feet, or a ratio of 12 percent, for properties this size.
The planning board has postponed its public hearing on the proposal to allow the conservation commission and historical commission to conduct their reviews.
Sean Riley, an engineer at Tighe & Bond, laid out the challenges of the property caused by the amount of coastal resource area it is already showing during the conservation commission’s July 8 opening hearing on the project’s notice of intent.
Riley promised that the plan would improve the so-called resource areas on the property. Currently, the septic system, the garage with guest quarters, a retaining wall, bocce courts, and a gravel driveway are all in the flood zone, he said. The main objective of the new plan, he said, was to remove everything from the flood zone, re-establish resource areas, and improve their resilience with an aggressive planting plan of trees and beach grasses. Use areas would be consolidated into the section of the property farthest away from resource areas, Riley said.
The pool location was nixed early in the discussion, with conservation commission chair Karen Strauss informing the applicants that regulations prohibit swimming pools within the 50-foot buffer zone and that there are no waivers of that restriction.
Strauss and commission member Janet Benjamins urged Riley and the architectural team to look at moving the planned location of the house farther away from buffer zones. The topography of the lot, along with the location of resource areas, made it difficult to shift the location of the house, Riley said.
The owners’ proposed stairs to the beach were also discussed. The plan calls for wooden stairs raised on helical pilings extending to an existing stone revetment. From there, a series of granite steps would be anchored to the revetment.
“I am wondering why you have to have the stairs there when the property is adjacent to Campground Beach, and it would be very easy to access the beach from there,” Benjamins said.
“This seemed to be the most environmentally friendly way to get to the beach,” Riley said.
“It’s not environmentally friendly to walk down a few yards to access the beach?” Strauss said. “You’re assuming they would get in the car to drive down and access the beach?”
Attorney Benjamin Zehnder, representing Nargi and Picard, stepped in. “This property has property rights that include ownership of the beach and access to that beach,” Zehnder said, pointing out that the site is valuable. “To deny them access to that beach would be a significant detriment to the property value.”
He went on to say the proposed stairway was designed to have no impact on buffer zones. “So, to tell the applicants they can’t have a stairway is really not based on the wetlands bylaw or your own standards,” Zehnder said.
Strauss told the lawyer he was “jumping the gun.” The commissioners were simply asking questions, she said. “I was merely responding to the fact that apparently building the stairs is more environmentally friendly than walking,” Strauss said.
The public hearing will resume on Aug. 12. The conservation commission directed Riley to return with an analysis of layout alternatives that were considered, a plan with the proposed pool removed, and another look at putting the house farther away from resource areas.
The historical commission has also set its opening hearing for Aug. 12 to consider whether to impose a 12-month delay on demolition of the 1946 building based on whether it would negatively affect the town’s inventory of historic resources.
In Eastham, demolition of buildings 75 years old and older is subject to a review by the historical commission.
