The sun pours in the windows of the hotel ballroom, flickering as it bounces off nearby sand and water. Those who are crammed into the room can see a small plane whiz by, trailing a sign advertising cheap margaritas. The beach beckons, but its charms are ignored by the irate people gathered here.
Washington lawyer Carl A.S. Coan Jr. is on his feet, yelling at the five volunteers who serve on his neighborhood's board of governors.
This new home, disparagingly dubbed "the Twin Towers," is part of a heated dispute over building sizes in North Shores, Del.
(Photograph by Timothy Bell)
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"You are not dealing with the ferment in this community!" Coan shouts. His face is red. "I should have stayed in bed! This is a waste of my time. I would like an explanation as to what is going on!"
"Please stop yelling," one of his neighbors begs him.
It is Memorial Day weekend, the traditional kickoff of summer for Washingtonians who own vacation homes in North Shores, a private oceanfront community just north of Rehoboth Beach. In happier days, gearing up for summer in North Shores meant dusting off the grill and signing up for a beach umbrella at the private beach.
This year, however, North Shores's 295 property owners are caught up in an emotional debate over whether to limit the size of new homes being built there. One faction is demanding strict limits. The other doesn't want any limits beyond those already imposed by county zoning and building codes.
It's been ugly. There have been proposals and counterproposals. One lawsuit is pending, others are threatened. Even an arson threat has been made. Members on each side have accused those on the other of employing tactics better suited to their jobs on Capitol Hill and K Street than to a resort community that, until now, has been a welcome summer refuge.
"It is really tearing at the heart of the community. There are a lot of very, very angry, riled-up people here," says Mark Siegel, a Washington lobbyist with a vacation home in North Shores.
The North Shores board of governors hopes the acrimony will be resolved at this Saturday morning gathering at the Atlantic Sands Hotel. Its members are touting a compromise that would limit homes to 38 feet in height and 6,000 square feet of living space.
But that's still too big for Coan and members of a group that calls itself Concerned Property Owners of North Shores. One of their spokesmen, attorney Mark Gitenstein, stands up and offers a counterproposal. His plan would limit home sizes to 35 feet high and 5,000 to 5,500 square feet, depending on the size of the lot.
Gitenstein, 58, is wearing spectacles and an unbeachy plaid shirt, like a lawyer on casual Friday. As a young chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s, he was a key architect of the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork. Now Gitenstein is in private practice and says he is fighting a different battle -- to save the small-town charm of the place where he and his family have vacationed for years. His children learned how to cross the street here. They learned to ride a bike here. He wants the same thing for his grandchildren.
Gitenstein frowns at the scribbled-on piece of paper in his hand. "This is a very difficult set of policies," he says. "But I think it's very important we reach a consensus quickly before the situation worsens . . . It's important we do it in a way that will survive a legal challenge."
The attendees pepper him with questions, including an obvious one: Why are size limits needed?
Gitenstein seems surprised. He argues that the reason limits are needed should be clear to anyone who has seen the huge new homes being built among the tiny wood-frame cottages that date to the 1960s. There's a large modernist structure on Ocean Drive that the neighbors have nicknamed "the Twin Towers." And there's another one that's so big it's sniggeringly called "the Red Roof Inn."
"Why?" Gitenstein responds. "To preserve the character of the neighborhood."
"Your character is not my character," someone yells.
