In Wake of Garage Flap, Ripples Widen

By CHRIS BURRELL

The hammers are quiet over at the controversial Moujabber garage in
the North Bluff neighborhood of Oak Bluffs, but the political dust
hasn't begun to settle.

Just over a month after work on the three-story garage was halted,
neighbors in this enclave between the harbor and Nantucket Sound have
now banded together into a homeowners association.

Meanwhile, one of the neighbors - a vocal critic of Joseph
Moujabber's building - says he's now paying the price
for his protest: Harvey Russell's 80-year-old mother was notified
by the building inspector that she violated zoning bylaws because she
allegedly never had a permit for a dormer and deck built on her North
Bluff home more than 15 years ago.

Outside the neighborhood, political friction involving players in
the debate over the embattled garage has also heated up.

* Building inspector Richard Mavro is coming under fire from a
town board, the Cottage City Historic District Commission, for failing
to refer projects.

* Mr. Moujabber's cousin and business partner, Douglas
Abdelnour, Sr., turned up at Tuesday's meeting of the board of
selectmen and called selectman Kerry Scott a scofflaw for failing to
make her business on Circuit avenue handicapped-accessible. Nobody is
overtly stating there's a connection to the controversy in the
North Bluff, but Ms. Scott openly criticized Mr. Abdelnour and Mr.
Moujabber last month for their track record with building projects in
town.

Members of the historic commission were already faulting Mr. Mavro
back in March for granting a building permit for the garage and not
referring it to the zoning board of appeals for a special permit.

As for Mr. Russell, he said this week that the letter from Mr. Mavro
counts as retaliation. "This is undue harassment stemming from my
opposition to the nearby building," he wrote in a letter to
selectmen (printed in today's letters to the editor, Page
Fourteen).

Mr. Mavro did not return a telephone call from the Gazette yesterday
seeking comment.

Back in November, Mr. Mavro issued the original permit for the
garage to Mr. Moujabber, who stated at the time that he was replacing a
small garage at a cost of $22,000.

Neighbors mounted a protest in March when they saw that the garage
replacement had grown into a triple decker building with porch decks and
sliding glass doors.

Then, last month, under increasing pressure from neighbors, the
zoning board of appeals and town counsel Ron Rappaport, Mr. Mavro
revoked the garage's building permit. Mr. Moujabber and his Boston
attorney, Michael Vhay, are now appealing the decision to the ZBA, with
a hearing set for August.

Meanwhile, the fallout shows little sign of abating.

The most dramatic example came Tuesday night when Mr. Abdelnour
- who owns and operates Nancy's Restaurant on the harbor
with Mr. Moujabber - arrived at the selectmen's meeting with
a wheelchair-bound man, Alan Muckerheide, Sr.

Mr. Abdelnour pointed back at Mr. Muckerheide as he approached
selectmen, speaking of the need for businesses to be handicapped
accessible and the failure of a town official to comply with state laws
for access.

"This person has been defying the law for four years and
getting away with it, and that person is Kerry Scott," Mr.
Abdelnour told selectmen as he handed them copies of a 1999 document
from the state architectural access board. The notice from the state
agency states that Ms. Scott should install handicapped access to her
building before June 2000.

Selectmen offered no response to Mr. Abdelnour's charges, but
chairman Roger Wey suggested he request that the matter be included on
an upcoming agenda for the board.

"Let's see if somebody does something about it,"
said Mr. Abdelnour as he walked out of the council on aging building
with Mr. Muckerheide.

Later this week, Ms. Scott said she had received a telephone call on
Tuesday from the state agency informing her that a handicapped person
had lodged a complaint against her business, Good Dog Goods.

She has requested a copy of the complaint. The Gazette also
requested a copy from the architectural access board in Boston but has
not received a reply.

Ms. Scott also said that her attorney had advised her she did not
need to make her building handicapped accessible because there was not a
significant change of use from a four-unit apartment building to a
retail store. Furthermore, health codes prevent her from building a ramp
over her septic sytem, she told the Gazette.

The complaint filed against Ms. Scott comes less than three weeks
after she was quoted in a Gazette article saying that residents were
worried about the construction of a third floor deck at Nancy's
Restaurant because of the businessmen's history with building
projects in town.

That history, besides the North Bluff garage, includes an expansion
of Nancy's four years ago that sparked protests from neighbors.
Mr. Abdelnour and Mr. Moujabber added a second floor to the restaurant
under strict rules from the zoning board of appeals that it would be
used for storage only.

Two years later, the two restaurateurs had appealed the zoning board
decision to superior court and settled their dispure with neighbors, a
move that created 140 more seats, a new bar and second floor patio for
Nancy's. That expansion was never referred by Mr. Mavro to the
Martha's Vineyard Commission for consideration as a development of
regional impact (DRI), even though a 50-seat restaurant is one threshold
for such referral.

Now the question of referrals not being made by Mr. Mavro has become
a paramount issue for members of the historic commission. Last month,
they wrote a letter to town administrator Casey Sharpe, citing two
examples of building projects in the new historic district that Mr.
Mavro failed to refer to them: a large deck four feet off the ground and
the installation of vinyl-clad, single pane windows.

"The Cottage City Historic District Commission requests the
board of selectmen require the building official to observe the
following language of the district bylaw," stated a letter dated
May 20 from commission chairman S. David Wilson.

Selectmen handed off the letter to town counsel. Historic
commissioners are waiting on Mr. Rappaport to issue a legal opinion,
forcing Mr. Mavro to abide by the new rules of the historic district and
refer building projects to their board for review.