Staff Writer 

Cape Elizabeth resident Joyce Wilson-Sanford said she and her husband, David Sanford plan on spending the rest of their days in their house off Shore Road close to the South Portland border, just as the previous owners had.

“Of course we don’t want to rush it, but we plan on dying in our home,” Wilson-Sanford said.

Their house is one of many between the South Portland border and Mountain View Road that date back to the early 1900s, a neighborhood that Charles Road property owner Emily Materson said originated as a suburb of Portland. 

“When the rest of [Cape Elizabeth] was farmland this was a developed neighborhood,” she said. “People used to get on the trolley to commute to Portland.”

Materson and her neighbors have recently joined forces to form the North Shore Neighborhood Association, a formal group whose mission statement includes: “connection and community, [to] enhance and maintain integrity health and welfare, [and to] monitor transparency and openness of decisions and processes important to the neighborhood.”

The group’s first goal is to prevent the expansion of the Business A (BA) district – a task rooted in the recently approved comprehensive plan and approved by the planning board – specifically the inclusion of the three-story building at 553 Shore Road, a stone’s throw from the Wilson-Sanford residence. 

“There is no need for more business in this neighborhood,” Sanford said. “You have all of Cottage Road and South Portland.”

Owner Lee Wilson said the quarter acre parcel – valued at more than $220,000 – is currently zoned residential and directly abuts several nearby businesses including the former Cookie Jar and the Irving gas station. She said the space was currently being rented out on a weekly basis to “help pay the mortgage.”

“We saw a house that should have been a business rather than a home,” she said. “Nobody would want to live there now.” 

Ann Perrino, owner of a retail shop up the street from the Cookie Jar, said Wilson’s plan – converting the first floor to a “small retail space,” with offices on the second floor and possibly a tenant on the third – could help revitalize the “North Shore.”

“Without [the Cookie Jar] the neighborhood has completely changed,” she said. “There’s a lack of a visible community that I don’t think, unless you work here on a daily basis, is easy to notice.”

Perrino said she had faith Wilson could develop the property while at the same time “keeping with the quaintness of this little business area.”

“The community doesn’t understand all the time what they’re missing until it’s gone,” she said. “This could help bring back a sense of a neighborhood.”

Materson, however,  said the project would make the structure “a fish out of water.”

“It’s going to attract a different kind a clientele, more lights and noise,” North Shore Neighborhood Association member and Charles Road resident David Freeman said. “It would be a hangout.”

Materson said she suggested forming the group after  “bending over backwards to accommodate one person.”

She claims the comprehensive plan committee and the planning board continually ignored those against the rezoning of 553 Shore Road.

“They already have their minds made up,” Freeman said.

Several members of the association said they believed Cape Elizabeth Zoning Board member James Walsh, acting as a selling broker for the property, told Wilson the area was slated to be rezoned more than three years ago. 

“We want to know that the process is transparent, what we’ve seen so far is piecemeal decision making, unless you have a person with a special privilege,” Wilson-Sanford said. “We don’t like being antagonistic, but when the house was sold, I expected a neighbor.”

Wilson said Walsh – who failed to return calls from the Sentry before deadline – had not mentioned any rezoning, but she and her mother purchased the property “knowing [they] had an uphill battle.”

“There have been a lot of assumptions and some flat-out lies,” she said. “Some of those I chose to ignore because the planning board knows the truth.”

North Shore Neighborhood Association member Edward Materson said not only did Walsh’s involvement seem “fishy,” but the goals of the comprehensive plan were flawed in the “North Shore” neighborhood and other areas of town.

“We have a town center with a parking lot on one side and woods on the other. We have an incomprehensible comprehensive plan. Now we’re supposed to swallow the pill,” he said. “People see this area as a back corner to sweep the dirt into. It’s not the back door to South Portland, it’s the front door to Cape Elizabeth.”

At Monday night’s meeting, the proposed BA expansion was accepted unanimously vote and referred to the ordinance committee for further review. Sanford said it would be key for the group to stay “focused and motivated” while the proposed zone change was “passed from one subcommittee to another.” The group is scheduled to meet for the second time at 7 p.m. Nov. 17 at 1 Charles Road.