Shrinking the McMansion
How many times have you looked at that one house in the neighborhood that stood out? It’s a giant, sprawling castle, plopped in the middle of a row of modest bungalows or Cape Cods.
You look at that house — maybe it’s three stories high when none of its neighbors are more than two, maybe it hogs two whole lots — and think to yourself: Why didn’t someone stop this house from being built?
Well, the members of the Massachusetts Supreme Court might have been thinking the same thing.
A story written by Ted Smalley Brown on BusinessWeek’s Web site, which you can read here, examines a decision by that state’s supreme court that upholds the authority of local communities to restrict overbuilding.
The court sided with the Massachusetts town of Norwell’s zoning board when it denied a permit to a developer who wanted to tear down an existing house and replace it with one more than twice as large.
What’s this mean for developers around the country? It’s too early to tell. But maybe it won’t be as easy to build those sprawling mansions that seem so out of place in neighborhoods filled with more modest homes. You may argue that it’s not government’s place to dictate what people do with their land and homes. You may argue that we should let the market dictate what people build on their lots: After all, if no one bought those McMansions, builders wouldn’t build them.
But … I have to admit, I hate those towering homes that look like someone dropped them into the wrong neighborhood. Those nothing wrong with mansions. They just shouldn’t sprout somewhere where they dominate every other home.
