Westmoreland County couple fights back after council votes to build "unnecessary" business near their home
A local couple calls a recent business development "unsightly" and "unnecessary" and they're fired up because not only is it new to the neighborhood, but it's smack dab in their backyard.
"Before they started this whole section was all trees and foliage where you couldn't see anything beyond that."
Disgusted and disillusioned by the neighborhood they used to love, Cynthia and Troy Smith now stare at a future Caliber Collision auto shop.
"Every day we're going to be sitting here like we are now staring at this building with signage with lights with noise with smells," said Troy Smith, homeowner.
Their home sits at the edge of Manordale Farms in Murrysville, along busy Route 22.
Bambi and the birds used to fill their lush backyard and the lot directly behind it.
It's zoned commercial, but up until recently a farmhouse with horses filled the space. Now it's cleared trees, construction trucks, and mud.
"Our neighborhood people move here so their kids can go to Franklin Regional. People live here just for the school district," said Cynthia Smith, homeowner. "This is just a really peaceful, very nice, quiet neighborhood, well it used to be. Now it's not going to be."
The Smith family tells KDKA Investigates they started fighting back as soon as word got out that a developer purchased the land behind the first four homes in this plan.
"We got a petition that we got hundreds of people to sign. It didn't matter. We presented it. They didn't even look at it. We did everything we could," Smith said.
Meghan Schiller: "And it felt like it had already been decided?"
Smith: "Yes, before it even started.'
Council voted against the residents, in favor of the developer, but it's just one example of the growing tension in local municipalities between the rights of developers and existing landowners. Murrysville Chief Administrator Michael Nestico said that's exactly what happened here.
"Ultimately we'd wind up in a scenario where if this were denied, the developer indicated at the public meeting, they would contest that. We have no doubt that they would have. And at that point we would be in court," said Nestico. "Based on history, not only here but in other municipalities, there's a very good case," said Nestico.
He added it would then cost the other taxpayers of the municipality big money.
Nestico admitted he wouldn't want this in his backyard either, but feels the municipality got the developer to agree to more conditions this way.
"They did agree to 28 different conditions, things like fencing and some vegetation and some different control mechanisms on the property to control the sound, and the type of use and activity there," said Nestico.
He added, "If council had denied this use and it would have wound up in a court situation there's a very good likelihood that it would have still been approved because it was a permitted use, but those conditions would have all gone away."
The Smith family says they're left with no choice but to hire a lawyer and fight for anything to make the body shop a little more out of sight and out of mind.
"We want to retire and just be happy but I don't know what's going to happen now because I don't know what's going to happen," said Smith.
