WELLFLEET — “The zoning board is a good board,” said attorney Ben Zehnder in an April 6 interview with the Independent. “Next meeting, I’m sure the board will do the right thing, and somebody won’t be happy.”
Near midnight on April 8, that somebody was presumably Zehnder, who represents Steve and Donna DiGiovanni’s Great White Realty Group (GWRG). After an hour of uniformly critical public comments, 55 minutes of Zehnder-grilling by members of the board, and a total elapsed Zoom meeting time of 3 hours, 49 minutes, the board of appeals unanimously denied the DiGiovannis a trio of special permits for their 1.3-acre commercial lot at 1065 Route 6.
It was the third consecutive defeat before the ZBA for Zehnder and the DiGiovannis, who lost two appeals at a March 25 meeting: one challenging Building Inspector Paul Fowler’s cease-and-desist order following GWRG’s clear-cutting of the land, and the other challenging Fowler’s determination that some of the DiGiovannis’ proposed uses of the property — which they planned to lease as a satellite contractor’s yard to South Dennis’s GFM Enterprises, an excavating company — required special permits.
On April 8, those special permits were on the table. GWRG sought one for the open bulk storage of sand, loam, T-base, and stone; one for light industry for the screening of loam and topsoil; and one for multiple principal uses in the town’s commercial zoning district.
Two questions dominated the discussion. First: what, precisely, would GWRG’s and GFM’s operation at 1065 Route 6 look like? Second: would the benefits of that operation outweigh the detriment to the neighborhood?
Zehnder said that GFM would store vehicles at the site, including a front-end loader, two one-ton trucks, two 60-ton 10-wheelers, two skid-steers, one excavator, one small tilt-top trailer, and one large tilt-top trailer. It would also store supplies, including steel plates, precast risers, piping, outdoor containers, rebar and concrete panels, loam, T-base, and stone. Two GFM employees (a maximum of three) would go to 1065 daily; they’d take a vehicle and supplies to or from a job site, put them back at 1065 at night, then go home.
Zehnder argued throughout this hearing and the previous one that — besides the open storage of bulk excavation materials — none of that activity would exceed the definition of a contractor’s yard, which is allowed by right in Wellfleet’s commercial zone.
That claim was disputed by South Yarmouth attorney David Reid, who appeared at the meeting representing 88 property owners near or adjacent to the project. Reid called Zehnder’s submitted site plan “rather generic,” but took issue with even the “scant” information it provided.
The proposed “active manipulation of materials” — occasional loading of excavation materials into and out of trucks and storage bins — would entail a use “far more active” than permitted in a contractor’s yard, Reid said.
The ZBA members seized on Reid’s logic. “I don’t believe for a second,” said alternate Janet Morrissey, “that the drafters of that [contractor’s yard] definition envisioned what’s going to go on here.”
Board vice chair Michael Lynch was similarly skeptical. “I’ve been into trades my whole life,” he said. “I know what a contractor’s yard is and I know what a heavy industrial yard is. This is not — from my definition — a contractor’s yard.”
On the question of benefits and detriments, alternate Andrew Freeman asked Zehnder if GFM intended to hire Wellfleet neighbors to man the yard. “Greg Morris is a Truro native,” Zehnder replied. Al Mueller asked Zehnder whether noise at the site would be loud enough to bother neighbors. “Loudness is a subjective statement,” he replied. Doesn’t GFM already have an Outer Cape satellite operation, in Truro? asked ZBA chair Sharon Inger. “This is a site that works for them,” Zehnder replied.
In all, said Inger at the meeting’s close, “I can’t list many benefits. I don’t think that these contractors having a shorter ride does anything for the town of Wellfleet.”
With no special permits on file, 1065 Route 6 becomes, by default, a contractor’s yard. Should a business there overstep the bounds of that definition, Building Inspector Fowler can issue another cease-and-desist order.
