HDC tells Madaket property owner to lower foundation
BY PETER B. BRACE
After issuing a stop-work order to 12 Washington Ave. owner Donna Pino for allegedly increasing the height of the grade on her lot, the Historic District Commission told her to either lower her foundation or find another solution.

The HDC says that this picture clearly shows the change in the grade of the foundation which, in turn, would make the building "extaordinarily high," said HDC member Dirk Roggeveen.

Pino has HDC approval to build a 2,124-square-foot house 24 feet tall on her lot, but her neighbor at 6 C St., Nancy Martin, along with the commission and the Madaket Advisory Board charge that Pino's contractor Peter Dooley raised the grade of the lot higher than permitted, creating the potential for a house that would be several feet taller than originally approved.

"I'm very upset," Martin told the HDC at its Nov. 7 meeting. "I think it's blatant. I think this is an attempt to just raise it up and get a better view and not comply with the contouring and grade of the land. I really wish you would ask these people to take this property and re-conform it to the lot, not just for my property, but for Madaket."

HDC Administrator Mark Voigt sent Pino a stop-work order on Oct. 27 telling her that after he inspected her foundation, he found it to be significantly higher than approved by the commission on May 3. At last week's meeting that Pino attended for proposed window revisions to her new house plans, the HDC ignored the revision request and chastised her and Dooley for raising the grade of her lot without HDC approval.

"I did spend quite a bit of time at the site and I was concerned about the fact that it had been re-graded," said HDC Member Valerie Norton. "I'm very concerned that it was approved with a totally flat grade and it was misrepresented. I would not have looked at the house so large, so far back, if I had known that."

Norton said the lot should not have been re-graded without benchmarks and suggested that Pino lower her foundation about 18 inches. Members Dirk Roggeveen, Linda Williams and Dawn Hill-Holdgate agreed, but Dooley told the commission that the house will not be taller than the 24- foot ridge height the commission approved.

"It's the same foundation, it's just moved closer to Hither Creek," Dooley said at the meeting.

Pino corroborated Dooley's take on the condition of her lot.

"My idea to build that house [was] to keep in line with old Madaket," Pino told the HDC. "I'm not trying to change anything. When I walked that land for the very first time, it was flat, went down a little and dropped off, we didn't the change grade we just backfilled it."

But Martin, who took before and after photos of Pino's lot from all angles, begs to differ. Several of her photos show the new fill around Pino's foundation facing the east side of her house, but because her newly graded lot is allegedly several feet higher - fourand a-half feet, according to the Madaket Advisory Board - Dooley put in a temporary, unapproved retaining wall to hold back the dirt.

Apparently, the photos do not lie and was the basis for the commission's request that Pino and Dooley return to its Nov. 21 meeting with better answers to the HDC's questions or a plan to lower the foundation at least 18 inches.

"The pictures we have from Mrs. Martin clearly demonstrate the change in grade," said Roggeveen. "It is accentuated by the fact of how out of the ground it is. This building is going to be extraordinarily high out of the ground and that is not what was approved."

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