“For the first time, it was light inside this beautiful house,’’ Frank McElroy, the Scheys’ attorney, said yesterday morning.
Massachusetts Land Court ruled in 2000 that the Johnson home on Bubier Road must come down, because the lot on which it sat did not meet the town’s minimum-width requirements, McElroy said.
But a string of expensive appeals, which featured a battle of intractable wills between neighbors who lived only 28 feet apart, led to a dozen years of waiting and wondering.
The legal fight effectively ended in December when Johnson withdrew his latest zoning appeal, McElroy said.
For the embattled homeowner, the fight has been a demoralizing setback, his attorney said.
“It’s been pretty devastating. Most people when they’re 74 years old are looking forward to retirement,’’ Noonan said of Johnson, who is divorced. “It would strike me that life is too short for people to be so vindictive, so vengeful.’’
Johnson “lost the battle, but I think the real sad portion of the story is that an accommodation could not have been made with the Scheys,’’ Noonan said. “I’m sure they’re drinking margaritas’’ in celebration.
Neither the Scheys nor Johnson could be reached for comment yesterday.
Noonan said that Johnson had offered to swap homes with the Scheys, who then would have had a wide view of the harbor and Marblehead Neck. Yesterday, McElroy scoffed at the recollection of that overture, as well as a proposal to alter the building plans.
“They were jokes,’’ McElroy said. “My clients’ house is a beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, shingle-style house that is designed for where it’s built. The place he built was not very interesting or nice.’’
