To anyone who follows politics at the neighborhood level, the problem with the Knights of Columbus hall is all too familiar. A business settles into a neighborhood, agreeing to some restriction in order to get around zoning regulations that were put in p

TK, The Knights and the NIMBYs

To anyone who follows politics at the neighborhood level, the problem with the Knights of Columbus hall, like the St. Patty’s day difficulty at TK O’Malley’s, is all too familiar. A business settles into a neighborhood, agreeing to some restriction in order to get around license or zoning regulations that were put in place specifically to keep businesses like that out. Then, somewhere down the road (usually two years) the business decides it doesn’t like the restriction, chooses to ignore it and all sides go to court. After years of acrimony and thousands in legal bills, some court rules that the restriction is unenforceable and the neighbors are stuck.

A similar battle was fought to conclusion a couple of years ago between the owners of Il Trattoria on Cambridge Street in Boston and the Beacon Hill Civic Association. The city conditioned issuance of a beer and wine license on the restaurant reaching agreement with the neighborhood association. The neighborhood, already burdened with two college bars, one of which had a customer murdered in the bathroom, insisted only that the owners agree in writing never to seek a hard liquor license. They did, and everyone was happy ... for a couple of years. Then the owners decided they weren’t making enough money on beer and wine. Ignoring the previous agreement, they applied for the hard liquor license. Everyone went to court for what now seems like a foregone conclusion, Trattoria got its hard liquor license.

While the judicial reasoning in that case was typically tortured, the basic principle can be boiled down to one sentence: If somebody owns a piece of property they can do any damn thing they want on it and, unless it can be construed as a felony, there’s not a damn thing you, or anyone else, can do about it. Once allowed to occupy a site, a business can not be restricted in any meaningful way.

The only conclusion one can reach from watching the court’s reaction to these disputes is that agreements with undesirable potential neighbors, no matter what they’re attached to, or how well-written they might be, are worthless. Equally clear is that the word of businessmen and developers during allegedly serious proceedings such as zoning board hearings or board of selectmen meetings is also worthless for reasons that have nothing to do with the trustworthiness of the individual.

Ethical businessmen are often dumbstruck when a skeptical neighbor refuses to accept their “solemn word” that they will or won’t do something on their property. Unfortunately the historical record is crystal clear. Their is no legal penalty for breaking agreements you make with the neighbors. Thus, it is a rare businessman who doesn’t offer his “solemn word” (often in writing) if you’ll just grant him that little variance.

This is not to say that all (or even most) developers and business types will lie to get their way in zoning and licensing disputes. Far from it. So many do, however, and there’s so little remedy for it, that only a fool would take their word at face value. Neighbors are placed in a completely untenable position. While everyone would like to reach some agreement, if it can’t be enforced, there’s no point. The only rational response is to treat the variance seeker as a stone liar and fight like hell to keep him from even getting close enough to his license or variance for someone to suggest an ‘agreement’.

Businessmen, politicians and MBTA spokesmen would do well to keep all this in mind the next time a seemingly reasonable suggestion to tack some restriction onto a new license or zoning variance is howled down by a snarling pack of ‘NIMBYs’. Noone has been more critical of the anti-train crowd than I have. I can not criticize their manipulation of the process, though, without also noting out that their cynical misrepresentations are merely a mirror image of what businessmen have been doing for many years: lying whenever it works. That’s the way politics works. Any successful strategy or tactic will eventually be copied by the other side. What goes around, comes around.

Tune in next week when, in my new position as cyber-clam warden, I explain the toxic effects of the red tide of Internet real-estate advertising. Until then, may you live in uninteresting times.

John Rodley is a pro-rail NIMBY who hasn’t mentioned The Historic Character of Hingham Center in several weeks.