Plans for a 16-home Westbrook subdivision in the Deer Hill neighborhood off Main Street have neighbors concerned about losing both the value of their homes and the wooded buffer between their quiet neighborhood and busy Warren Avenue.
About 40 neighbors gathered at Tim Hortons on Main Street Jan. 17 to meet with developer Peter Busque about his second subdivison in the area. Last year, he completed the Neighborhood at Deer Hill, which consists of 12 homes off Tolman Street.
Busque described the homes built off Tolman Street as affordable. He said he sold them for around $220,000. According to Dana Jenkins, who lives on Tolman Street, the homes aren’t consistent with the others in the neighborhood.
“These aren’t starter neighborhoods,” Jenkins said. “He’s building homes for first-time buyers in neighborhoods that are already established.”
Michelle Keith, who moved into her home on Deer Hill Circle a year ago, is concerned that the same thing will happen when Busque starts clearing the woods beside her property.
“It would be taking away from the value of our houses,” said Keith.
Busque said he intends to match the style of the existing houses in the area, and does not want to build starter homes. He said he plans to sell the homes for between $250,000 and $300,000 and to build garages on some of them.
According to Keith, most of the homes in the area are worth more than $300,000 and all of them have attached two-car garages.
In addition, Keith said, she doesn’t want to see the wooded area near her home wiped out, both because of the wildlife that exists there and because it acts as a buffer between the neighborhood and Warren Avenue.
“It’s the only thing that separates us,” she said.
Keith said when she moved into her home on Christmas Eve in 2006, there were four deer standing on her lawn. Since Busque’s first development was built off Tolman Street, she hasn’t seen any more.
Molly Just, city planner, said a paper street – a street that was laid out on paper but never developed – exists where Busque plans to build. In some cases, these paper streets can be undeveloped for hundreds of years. According to Busque, this one was approved in 1985.
Just said that if Busque’s plans meet all the requirements of those that were set when the paper street was originally approved, he doesn’t have to get Westbrook Planning Board approval for the project – “as long as the abutters don’t have a problem with it,” she said.
Though Busque said the zoning requirements would allow him to build up to 27 homes on the property, he plans on building only 16, each on a half-acre lot. Busque has yet to go to the city with his plans. For now, he said, he’s looking into the concerns the neighbors expressed at their meeting last week.
“I hope we can work together,” he said.
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