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Tim Klink

    DEVELOPMENT

    Mixed-Use Proposal on Route 6A Faces Hurdles

    Orleans ZBA members say they like Klink’s plan but don’t think they can allow it

    By

    ORLEANS — Eastham developer Tim Klink is trying to make good on his promise to build a mixed-use project at 177 Route 6A. But his proposal includes below-grade apartments, which aren’t allowed in Orleans without exceptions that the town may be reluctant to grant.

    While Klink secured site plan approval from the town planning dept., his plans raised questions — as well as the suggestion that the town’s rules should be revisited — at the zoning board’s June 5 hearing on his requests for a special permit for apartments and a variance for the two below-grade units. To go forward, the project would also need relief from the town’s density requirements because of the small size of the lot.

    Klink bought the building after it was damaged in a fire that took the life of a six-year-old boy in February 2023.

    Instead of renovating the existing building, Klink plans to demolish it and construct a new one similar in style. His proposal calls for office space on the first floor, four one-bedroom apartments on the second floor, and two apartments in the basement.

    The two basement units would be accessed by a door on the left side of the building. The pair would feature 10-foot-high ceilings and windows on one wall. The bedrooms and living rooms would have windows, but the kitchens and bathrooms would not. Klink also planned an outdoor patio surrounded by a retaining wall.

    Zoning board chair Gerald Mulligan dominated the evening’s discussion, arguing that the project didn’t meet any of the requirements for a variance. Those are demonstrated hardship, financial or otherwise; hardship related to soil, slope, or topography; and a requirement that the project would not be substantially detrimental to the public interest.

    “I feel the hardship is the need for employee housing,” said Klink. Mulligan countered, “That’s a town need, not your need.”

    Regarding a hardship caused by topography, Mulligan said the half-acre site had a slight gully but remained suitable for building. The proposed below-grade apartments, said the chair, are prohibited in town without a variance. The town meeting had prohibited such units based on residents’ vision of quality of life, he said.

    “I don’t think this application satisfies any of the three, much less all three,” Mulligan said.

    Board member Lynne Eickholt said she has a below-grade guest room. The window “looks right out onto the ground,” but, she said, “it’s a great room.”

    “I think that this is not necessarily terrible or awful,” Eickholt said of below-grade apartments. “We do need housing; even though the town has said they don’t want it, it bothers me.”

    Board member Sibel Asantugrul agreed. “I would really like to see how we can perhaps find a way for the applicant to go through with this,” she said.

    Member Austin Higgins bemoaned the limitations of the town’s bylaws. “I’d desperately like to see a project like this go forward, but I don’t think it’s possible to approve it with what’s in place,” he said.

    On June 11 Klink was preparing for a June 13 session before the architectural review board. “They had questions, so we’re going to come back with more details,” he said.

    The zoning board continued its hearing to July 3, taking no action on the variance or special permit requests. “Right now, I’m consulting with my attorney on how to handle the variance component for the apartments and whether or not we can argue successfully for the variance,” Klink said. “It’s not looking likely.”

    Klink is considering his options. One would be to withdraw the application, he said, and ask the planning board to bring an article to town meeting that would remove the prohibition on below-grade apartments.

    “We’re trying to create ADUs [accessory dwelling units], and we’re trying to create affordable housing,” Klink said. “To let somebody do a basement-level apartment, as long as it’s safe and meets all the criteria, I think it should be allowed.”

    Meanwhile, Klink has also put the property on the market. He paid $500,000 for it in August 2023; it is listed for $1.5 million. “It was my Realtor kind of feeling, ‘shoot for the stars,’ ” Klink said. He listed it “just to see if there’s interest in the property should everything be approved.”

    Klink is receiving quite a bit of interest, he said, but no decisions have been made. “We haven’t put any deals together,” he said, “and I’m still not sure whether I’m going to move forward and sell it once it’s approved.”

    DEVELOPMENT

    Eastham’s Pressure-Treated Wood Bylaw Faces Challenge

    Attorney tells town its environmental bylaw conflicts with state’s building code

    By

    EASTHAM — Eastham is the only town on Cape Cod that prohibits the use of pressure-treated wood in marine environments under its wetlands protection bylaws. But according to an environmental attorney who is currently battling the town’s conservation commission on behalf of a local builder, the bylaw is illegal because it conflicts with the Mass. building code.

    The debate arose when a new house overlooking Cape Cod Bay at 345 Harmes Way was found to be sitting on 22 foundation pilings made of pressure-treated wood. Construction of the house has been completed, and owners Gary and Jan Ross of Oakland, N.J. have their occupancy permit.

    What the project lacks, however, is a certificate of compliance from the conservation commission; such a certificate is issued when all the conditions specified in a project’s wetlands permit have been met.

    The Eastham Conservation Commission served local builder Tim Klink, president of Coastal Companies, with a wetlands bylaw violation notice and an accompanying enforcement order last November related to the foundation pilings he used at the Rosses’ house. The commission said it had received a letter of complaint regarding Klink’s use of pressure-treated wood.

    Klink was ordered to come up with a handful of measures he could take to remedy the violation, and one of those options, said commission chair Karen Strauss, should be replacement of all the pilings. Klink was given until Feb. 27 to prepare his response. The commission also ordered Klink to provide receipts related to the pilings that would clarify what the wood was treated with.

    Klink, who supplied the commission with a letter about the wood from his project engineer, argued that the pilings did not violate the bylaw. If they had, he said, he wouldn’t have used them.

    “I’ve said it all along: why would I risk 24 years and the reputation of my firm to do that?” Klink said in a phone interview. “Come on. That’s ridiculous.” He took the position that he did not need to provide the documentation and options for remedies the commission has asked for.

    Klink hired Boston attorney Glenn Wood to represent him and Tetra Tech, an engineering firm, to test the pilings and the area surrounding them.

    Town Manager Jacqueline Beebe meanwhile asked attorney Alexander Weisheit of KP Law, the firm that represents the town, to look into the legality of the town’s wetlands bylaw related to pressure-treated wood. In his emailed response, Weisheit said that, while the conservation commission can enact regulations and bylaws that are more stringent than those in the state’s Wetlands Protection Act, “such regulations may not directly conflict with otherwise applicable state laws.”

    “In my opinion, the application of the commission’s regulations to prohibit the use of [pressure treated wood] could be subject to legal challenge as preempted by the Code,” Weisheit wrote, referring to the state building code.

    Wiesheit added that it was also his opinion that the commission should consider amending its regulations to say that “it had a strong preference” for non-pressure-treated wood and to back that up with a scientific study.

    During a tense discussion at the March 12 meeting of the conservation commission, Klink’s attorney told the commissioners to “stand down,” rescind the enforcement order, and grant a certificate of compliance for 345 Harmes Way at its next meeting.

    “You’ve been told by town counsel at least twice,” Wood said. “The commission has no jurisdiction over pressure-treated wood. It is utterly preempted by the state building code, so your interest in enforcement is completely illegal and therefore a baseless inquiry.”

    Strauss did not agree. “Whether the regulation is legal or not, it’s still a matter we are investigating and reviewing, and it is not something we are prepared to discuss without our counsel,” she said.

    Strauss said the email laying out the opinion from Wood’s law firm that the state building code preempts the local wetlands law arrived the same day as the commission’s meeting, so members did not have adequate time to review it.

    In one exchange, Conservation Agent Alex Bates and Strauss discussed the possibility of the town taking its own samples of the wood pilings to determine their composition since they had not received the documents they had requested from Klink.

    “Your enforcement orders are moot and unenforceable; therefore, we are not forwarding any information on pressure-treated wood, and we are not giving access to the property,” Wood said.

    The attorney also cited a request for a minor project change that Klink submitted in June 2021. The submission included a first floor and framing plan for 345 Harmes Way that indicated that pressure-treated pine pilings would be used.

    Bates, who only recently became the town’s conservation agent, said that he would look back through the records because he did not recall the pilings being mentioned in that change request. “That doesn’t even matter,” Wood responded, “because, again, you have no jurisdiction over pressure-treated wood.”

    Strauss’s fellow commissioners did not participate in the discussion with Wood, although the chair asked at one point if anyone else would like to speak. There was no discussion of next steps, with Strauss simply saying the commission would “move on” to the next matter on the agenda.

    Strauss declined to speak with the Independent about this story, as did Hillary Greenberg-Lemos, Eastham Director of Health and Environment, likely because the case appears to be headed toward litigation.

    While the town’s attorney and town hall staff can weigh in on the debate over the legality of the town’s prohibition of pressure-treated wood, the conservation commission, which enacted the wetlands bylaws, will make its own decision.

    “If they make a decision that’s illegal,” said Klink, “then we have no choice but to sue the town.”

    Further discussion of 345 Harmes Way was not part of the commission’s subsequent meeting on March 26. But a house at 1 Nycoma Way, the subject of a similar complaint over the use of pressure-treated foundation pilings, was on that meeting’s agenda.

    The pilings in the new case were also installed by Klink’s company. In his update, Bates said that the complaint is being kept “off to the side” while the commission works through the Harmes Way case.

    HOUSING

    Eastham Developer Buys Orleans Site of Fatal Fire

    Tim Klink has a plan for workforce housing where a 6-year-old died

    By

    ORLEANS — Tim Klink, an Eastham builder and developer, has purchased 177 Route 6A, where a Feb. 4 fire in an illegal apartment caused the death of a six-year-old boy and rendered the building uninhabitable. The structure has been vacant and boarded up since the fire.

    Klink, CEO of the Coastal Companies, bought the half-acre property from lawyer Benjamin Zehnder in mid-July. The building is salvageable, Klink said, with most of the damage confined to the upstairs room where the fire started.

    “I’m going to put together renovation plans and go before the town to garner the necessary approval for what we want to do,” he said. “Then we’re going to do a full rehab of the building this winter.” He hopes to have the work completed by next May.

    His plans include construction of two offices on the main floor. One office will serve as a satellite location for the Coastal Companies and the other will be leased.

    Upstairs, he hopes to build six or more one-bedroom apartments, with the number dependent on town regulations. “Workforce housing is in big demand, as you know,” Klink said. “I own multiple businesses, so we need apartments for staff to live in.”

    Klink bought the Yardarm Restaurant in Orleans in May.

    “We have a great staff there, and they’re all looking for places to live,” he said. “To continue operations with the restaurant and to be able to recruit qualified staff, we need housing.”

    Klink had been looking for a building to purchase for a while. He approached David Delgizzi of Weston about buying the now-closed Lobster Pound restaurant at 157 Route 6A and the Truro Motor Inn in Truro, where a Housing Court judge had issued several orders to address substandard living conditions. Those orders were ignored by Delgizzi and his wife, Carolyn.

    The last tenant at the Truro inn was evicted last month because of unaddressed building and health code violations. With the property unoccupied, the court ordered the utilities shut off.

    “He won’t sell any of the properties,” Klink said of Delgizzi. “He’d rather run them as a slumlord, which is awful.”

    The Eastham businessman has also had his eye on the five-acre Governor Prence Inn property in Orleans, which was bought by the town in 2021. “That was kind of a disappointment to us because we were going to buy it and develop workforce housing,” Klink said. “I was going to do a nice multi-family property for people who live and work in town.”

    He even looked into the site owned by the Christmas Tree Shops but said the company plans to lease it rather than sell.

    When Klink approached Zehnder about 177 Route 6A, the attorney said he intended to sell it. Zehnder had purchased it in 2005 for $699,000. Its assessed value before the fire was $965,600. Klink paid $500,000 for it.

    The Fatal Fire

    The February fire that killed six-year-old Kyi Odeen Bourne started in an illegally constructed apartment. According to earlier reporting in the Independent, the building was licensed for two commercial spaces on the main level and two residential apartments on the second floor. Sometime after 2017, two more apartments were added without the required permits or inspections for building code compliance. The upstairs bedrooms lacked smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, Building Inspector Martin Furtado told the Independent.

    Kyi, whose family lived in one of the illegal apartments, was found by firefighters in an upstairs bedroom next to the room where the fire started. A relative told the Independent that Kyi and other family members initially ran downstairs, but the six-year-old, who was diagnosed with autism, must have panicked and run back to the bedroom unnoticed in the confusion.

    When contacted by the Independent in March, Zehnder said he had signed a lease-to-purchase agreement with Peter Eli in 2017. While Zehnder still owned the building, under the name of a limited liability company called College Fund LLC, he said he had little involvement after the deal with Eli was signed. Correspondence from the town regarding the property went directly to Eli, he said, and it was Eli who constructed the illegal apartments without his knowledge.

    The investigation into the fire found that the cause was faulty wiring in a fan, which was unrelated to the many violations connected to the construction.

    Zehnder said in March he had terminated the lease-to-purchase agreement with Eli after the fire. Instead of repairing the building, Zehnder kept it boarded up until he sold it.

    Building Commissioner Thomas Evers did not respond to an email asking whether Zehnder or Eli had been fined for a long list of building violations.

    Finding a Home for a Family

    Following the fire, Kyi’s eight-year-old sister, Kylie, his mother, Shantal Thomas-Johnson, and her new husband, Rahim Johnson, were left homeless.

    According to Scott Carpenter, superintendent of the Monomoy Regional School District where Kylie and Kyi attended a Harwich elementary school, the family had been in the apartment on Route 6A for only a few days when the fire occurred. They and other relatives had been living with Kyi’s grandmother in crowded conditions before that.

    “We had a very vulnerable family who lost a child and lost all of their belongings,” Carpenter said. “We let the community know, and they stepped in with support for the funeral. We were getting clothing donations and food donations, so we were able to step in to help, but the biggest challenge was keeping a roof over their heads.”

    After the fire, the family lived at the Stone Horse dormitories in Harwich until the rooms were needed for seasonal workers. The school district then succeeded in finding a property owner with a seasonal rental where they stayed until the tourist season started.

    Meanwhile, Joy Jordan, the school district’s community engagement coordinator, helped the family navigate the affordable housing system, said Carpenter, and they secured a long-term affordable unit in Chatham, which was ready for them to move in on July 1.

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