Saugus man conveys displeasure with construction project

SAUGUS – “Please don’t peek in our windows and we won’t peek in yours.”That’s what the sign in Mike Sandford’s back yard reads after the Fairmount Avenue resident said he became fed up with the construction at Stonecliffe Heights.”When we bought the house 12 years ago, it was nothing but woods there and we were under the impression that nothing would be built there,” said Sandford. “The biggest complaint is how close he put this house to our house. We’re the only ones that have been impacted like this. We tried to work with him. We were friendly. I don’t think we got treated decently.”The rest of the sign in his yard, which is painted on a white sheet, reads: “We really do miss our bushes that were ruined six months ago. Merry Xmas.”Two other signs sit on the side of his home. One, written on a bedsheet, reads, “Dear Santa, We’ve been really good this year. Please bring back our bushes and privacy. Merry Xmas.”The other is written on a white piece of plywood that sits against a flagpole. It reads, “We don’t like it, either. We sure do miss our bushes that were ruined six months ago. Merry Xmas.”Sandford’s home sits on the corner of Fairmount Avenue and Vinegar Hill Drive, a 46-home subdivision that’s been under construction for more than a decade. The latest home to be built by Procopio Construction sits just feet away from Sandford’s property line.Sandford said contractors told him the home they were planning to build next to his would be smaller than what wound up there.”I remember saying to him, ‘It won’t be a skyscraper, will it?'” said Sandford. “To have this great, gray wall go up behind us was the icing on the cake for me. It’s not what we bought, not what we imagined, not what we wanted.”Now Sandford said he and is family are thinking about moving.”The dream that we had is not here anymore,” he said.Developer Kevin Procopio, however, said the home is much smaller than the rest of the houses in the development, and noted he even offered to sell the lot to Sandford before building and let him cut firewood from felled trees for years.”I did keep my word on that,” he said. “We shrunk it down and didn’t put in a big monstrosity. We try to minimize the impact, but you can only go so far. I offered the lot to him; he wanted it at gift prices. His whole issue is the house being built there, but there are a lot of things in life we have to learn to deal with.”Sandford also had issues with trees being cut down and landing on his property, which he claimed killed two of his forsythia bushes, and damaged his grill and a pair of downspouts six months ago.Since putting up his signs, however, Sandford said new downspouts were dropped off and a pair of new bushes were planted.”Lo and behold, after I put these signs up last weekend, two downspouts magically appeared in my backyard,” said Sandford. “I got to him ? If nothing else we’ve made people aware that we’re not happy and everything with this job had a double meaning.”Procopio, however, said he had the bushes ready to plant before the signs went up and was waiting for a break in the cold weather to put them in.But while there’s nothing he can do about the new home sitting feet from his backyard, Sandford said contractors could have done more to increase privacy.”We were understanding that the trees he put in were going to be a lot taller,” said Sandford. “Had he put a couple of decent-sized trees so we don’t have to look directly at that house and they don’t have to look at us, that would have been the decent thing to do ? I asked how long till they grow so we can get some privacy and he said, ’10 to 15 years.'”With Sandford’s signs posted for one week as of Saturday, Procopio said his son filed a complaint with the Saugus building department against Sandford and may even take legal action because of the financial hardship he says Sandford is causing.”It is actually losing customers,” Procopio said of the signs. “People come there to look at the house and turn around and walk out