Petty Bourgeoise
Just how petty can a condominium board be? Let's find out.
For children at the Room to Grow preschool in Tewksbury,... [t]heir playground is gone.After a yearlong battle between the school’s owner, Wendy Bowen, her landlord, and the board of managers that governs her building, the slides, swings, and climbing structures were taken down on Aug. 28.
"We've been in this location for 20 years, and the playground has been here for 17," said Bowen. "But last August, they raised issues about it."
"They didn't show proper process for protection of the children," said Mike Naddif, who owns a unit in the building and sits on the board.
"What if something happened to a kid? All the unit owners would be liable."In response to safety concerns, Bowen said, she increased her insurance to release other tenants of liability. Her landlord, meanwhile, worked with the Tewksbury Planning Board to track down original permits for the playground. Bowen said the landlord was able to find the permit from the initial building plans, but final permits after completion were not on file.
Then the board directed Bowen to dismantle the playground by January because it sat on common space that is part of the overall complex and does not belong to any one unit in the building.
In a residential condominium, it's reasonable for owners to make sure that others are not using the common spaces for themselves; people use their backyards, for example, for all sorts of things.
But have you ever seen a commercial condominium's open space? It's generally nicely landscaped, and quite pristine. And never used for anything. Rather than have open space used for the playground, just like it has for 17 years, some petty tyrants would rather it get sprayed with enough Roundup and fertilizer every two weeks so that it looks nice and green (and so that the Merrimack River gets enough chemical runoff).
But it gets better.
But the school was dealt a final blow when the board notified Bowen that she was going to be responsible for its legal fees as well as her own. Bowen said the additional financial burden was the last straw.
"To challenge the trustees' right to assess fees would have required costly litigation," said Mark Rosen of Goodman, Shapiro, & Lombardi, the attorney representing Room to Grow and the school's landlord. Bowen was advised to sign off on the elimination of the playground.
In response to questions as to why the playground became an issue now, after so many years, the board's attorney said timing is irrelevant.
"The central issue is not how long it's been here, but whether it has ever been a lawfully permitted use of the site," said Richard O'Neil of O'Neil & Associates.
"The bottom line is that there was never any such approval by the Planning Board."
This really is a fascinating story. A business owner and her landlord are on the same side of an issue—that it seems obvious enough that the town had approved of the playground and that the playground was doing no one any harm. They made sure that reasonable questions about liability insurance were covered. And it's not like her neighboring businesses mind having the youngsters around.
For Jack McKenzie, a unit owner whose accounting firm, McKenzie & Frawley, is just a few doors down from the school, that reasoning was not satisfactory.
"This whole situation has been unjustified. That playground has been here for over 15 years and it's never been a problem," he said.
"It's always been a pleasure to see the kids out there."
The problem, of course, is that some people let their anal sphincters define their entire personalities. In a perfect world, Mike Naddif would find that his more humane clients were taking their sales and marketing business elsewhere on the grounds that his marketing skills are clearly deficient. In our actual world, we can only hope that Wendy Bowen finds a better location for her school and that her landlord campaigns to kick the current condo board out on their respective backsides.
Labels: marketing professionals from Hell, Mike Naddif, Petty Bourgeosie, Room to Grow preschool, Stupid condominium tricks, Tewksbury
