Reply to [VA] Dispute between neighbors in Del Ray

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Since you guys don't know the neighborhood or the people, here are a couple points of information. First, Gaver Nichols is probably one of the people most responsible for turning the Del Ray neighborhood from a run down white-trashy neighborhood into one of the hottest neighborhoods for young professional families in the DC area. He is a fantastic architect who risked and invested his own money over decades into creating a vision for an entire part of Alexandria. He is certainly no run of the mill HGTV-type flipper.

But, as anyone who knows him or considered hiring him, he is pretty much a jerk who insists on his way or the highway. That's not necessarily an uncommon thing with very good architects, but it is a little more unusual for those who do middle class residential work. He's clearly beefing with the neighbors who just couldn't buy into his vision for the little compound he created. It's all and all a pretty petty vendetta. I'm guessing his worst personality characteristics are becoming more evident with age.

Those of you who think he used his influence on a city task force 7 years ago to facilitate this nasty vendetta are just dead wrong. First, it would be a pretty good bit of fortune telling to know that the neighbors would renovate 5 years later in a way to piss him off. And he advanced the changes to be able to spite them years later. Second, there are really good reasons for the set back limit changes in a very dense city like Alexandria. It's not like the task force got to enact recommendations without lots of public hearings and a series of city council votes.[/quote]

I live in the neighborhood and am familiar with the people involved. Agree with this description of Gaver (although I might quibble a bit with the description of his abilities as "fantastic" - we were unimpressed when interviewing him for a big project years ago - our opinion was that his skill level was not enough to justify dealing with him as a person. I recognize that others may feel differently).

I think what is problematic here is that the developed property is subject to an Special Use Permit that expressly calls for shared open space. The only reason he was allowed to build the houses that way was because of the Special Use Permit application that described a shared space ideal. The family in this story bought into that vision and lived peacefully that way. They are not the people who planted things and landscaped in a way that irritated Gaver - the neighbors on the other side did that. And after that, Gaver himself put in divider plantings after previously saying he would keep the space open. The Linehans have been stuck in the middle of his disputes with various surrounding neighbors. While they did to a renovation, that window has always been there -- the reno just changed the location of rooms on the interior. He just got irritated that they used someone other than him. Bottom line is that he wanted to control everything about the three houses next to his even after they sold.

When the setback rules were changed, there was no provision for properties that were subject to or adjacent to properties subject to Special Use Permits. SUPs by definition trump the default rules. In this case, the change in the setback default rule that allowed the permit to issue defeats the Special Use Permit. Had the city reviewed the SUP and the representations made in connection with that SUP, it would have never issued the permit. Gaver absolutely understood that loop hole at the time. Whether he knew then that he would build in this way, I don't know - but his volatile interactions with the various neighbors absolutely go back that far. He also has a history of skirting the rules and then just paying a small fine, since the city rarely makes anyone demolish a structure already built. My guess is these guys are out of luck, unfortunately. It's too bad.[/quote]

Tall plantings or fence usually indicates a problem in existence. Perhaps the neighbor aggravated the wrong guy. [/quote]

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