The McMansion battles continue, this time in the Hamptons as an 83 year old resident takes on the newer big houses in her neighborhood:
Evelyn Konrad claims in a new federal lawsuit that her high-powered neighbors — many of them finance honchos — have turned her subdivision into an overcrowded “Queens by the sea” because of an improperly adopted zoning code.
The suit doesn’t seek money — it seeks demolition.
Undeterred by her wealthy opponents, the brassy Stanford law graduate once skewered the supersized digs as “multimillion-dollar penis enlargements,” in a letter to a local newspaper…
In addition to Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley, the suit names a host of cash-flush neighbors, including former Merrill Lynch honcho Donald Quintin and Manhattan attorney Denis Guerin.
Not your typical octogenarian, the yoga-practicing, bikini-wearing former NBC business reporter said that her modest, 2,200-square-foot colonial, purchased in 1984, has been slowly encircled by ballooning buildings ever since a new zoning code was adopted in 2005…
Konrad has demanded a jury trial and will argue the case herself, thank you very much.
I wonder what a jury would do…
It sounds like the zoning change from 2005 that is really at issue. I have no idea how often zoning regulations are overturned in court but I suspect they are infrequently challenged and even more rarely overturned.
LS,
You say the battle ‘continues’. Can you point me to other locals and fighters against them? Any legal cases/challenges?
thanks,
rob
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The opening line of the original post was referring to the ongoing battles over McMansions in a number of communities across the United States.
Two examples I have written about recently:
1. In San Francisco, a co-founder of Twitter faces opposition from neighbors.
2. Debate in Mission Hills, Kansas about whether to allow the construction of McMansions.
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