Little appetite for McMansions

WELLESLEY - They call it The House, and not in a complimentary way. It's a 5,900-square-foot, three-story Colonial wedged into little more than a quarter-acre, a structure that dwarfs the New England sampler of quaint Capes and Victorians nestled in the woodsy neighborhood around it.

But lately, this house on Denton Road has become more than something for neighbors to despair. It has also served as a call to action among a growing number of residents to battle against the McMansionization of this real estate-crazed town.

In their view, shared by the Wellesley Planning Board, overzealous developers are building hulking houses with cathedral ceilings and multiple-car garages that are completely out of scale with anything nearby.

But in the eyes of some builders, the outsize houses answer buyers' demands for bigger, fancier houses here and in suburban neighborhoods across Greater Boston.

Critics of McMansions are pushing to change town zoning laws by tying allowable house sizes not just to the size of individual properties, but to the scale of the neighborhood. The proposed ordinance would also involve a review board of residents to make judgments about a proposed house: Would it block a neighbor's sunlight? Would its droning air conditioning sit too close to the property lines? Would the driveway cause glaring headlights to shine in nearby windows?

"It means that the builders who are just after giant, graceless boxes will have to find somewhere else to build," said Susan Kunk. She and her husband, Wellesley College professor Jens Kruse, live in a 1,700-square-foot Cape across the street from The House, which still has not sold after a year-and-a-half on and off the market for $2 million.

Two other affluent suburbs, Lincoln and Weston, passed restrictions on big houses years ago, and now the topic has come to a head in Wellesley, a town sometimes sneered at as Swellesley by outsiders. Wellesley planners have spent nearly three years studying house and lot sizes and fighting off the objections of outraged developers. The proposed change will probably go before the Town Meeting on Nov. 6 for approval or rejection.

Newly constructed houses in Wellesley have outpaced national trends.

The median size of new houses in most of town is 4,400-square feet, according to a town Planning Board study, compared with a US average of about 2,500 square feet. In the wealthiest areas of Wellesley, houses of more than 5,000 square feet, costing upwards of $3 million, are becoming the norm.

At the first of two public hearings on the new regulations this month, the Planning Board displayed a PowerPoint presentation on the Denton Road house and sat through more than two hours of contentious public comment.

Marlies Stueart, a retired high school German teacher, told the board that the new rules will protect her College Heights neighborhood, which has a median house size of around 1,700 square feet. On her block, a developer recently tore down a ranch in hopes of building a 4,400-square-foot, four-story replacement.

The plan fell through, but neighbors are hunkering down for the next assault, Stueart said.

"We have a street of charming, smaller old houses and are a close walk to town," she said. "We feel very vulnerable."

The proposed new bylaws buck traditional zoning practice by tying allowable house size to the neighborhood's scale, not individual property lines.

In Wellesley's smallest residential building zone, 14,000 square feet or less of property, builders would have to stay under 3,600 square feet of house and garage to avoid a design review.

Neighborhoods zoned for 15,000 square feet and up could accept houses no larger than 4,300 square feet.

A 5,900-square-foot house such as The House on Denton Street would face review by the board and probably could not have been built on its current lot size. Houses that size could be built without facing review by the board only in a zoning district with 20,000-square-foot lots.

If the housing plans exceed the limits in the proposed law, the review board has a right to take up to 90 days and charge a still-undetermined fee, to decide whether the structure is appropriate.

The new rules are not an outright ban, the board says, and don't prevent tear-downs.

"This is not the ranch house preservation act," said board member Donald McCauley.

But the review board - volunteers appointed by the town Planning Board - would be empowered to make subjective judgments. Neighbors of the proposed mansions would be encouraged to attend hearings and chime in.

"People will need to start thinking differently about their projects," said Planning Board member Rose Mary Donahue. "The hope is that we'll be seeing better projects because people are thinking about them more."

Homebuilders, who have successfully delayed similar proposals in the past, plan to mail informational fliers in coming weeks, said veteran Wellesley builder Joe Grignaffini.

"We've been painted as an enemy when we care very much about the community," he said. "We are building the homes that people ask us to build."

Grignaffini, a Town Meeting member, said the proposed thresholds should be at least 400 square feet higher, the size of one good-sized room.

The builders have even offered a gentleman's agreement to the town to voluntarily build smaller houses, if the bylaw changes could be delayed.

"Now our backs are against the wall, and we have to fight this," Grignaffini said. "It already takes eight months to build a house, and now you are talking about 90 more days."

The proposed rules are vague, said Hossein Vahedi, the Newton architect who built the controversial Denton Road house. He said he followed all town zoning rules to the letter, but the neighbors and town have attacked his design for purely subjective reasons.

"I feel that I was targeted because I was the first one to build" a big house on this street, he said in a telephone interview.

"The house looks big now," Vahedi said, "but eventually all the homeowners will want to sell for a high price. New homes will be built, and the neighborhood will change."

Residents also expressed skepticism.

"This is bad for property rights," said Jim Kociuba. In his neighborhood, near the Weston line, tiny postwar ranch houses have sold for $800,000, and the families who have moved into the larger replacement homes "have been a huge bonus to our neighborhood," he said.

Under the new rules, developers would no longer pay top dollar for tear-downs if "they can't build houses that make economic sense," he said.

"Builders will go elsewhere, and those other towns and their school systems will see the benefits," said Kociuba, a stock trader.

But Planning Board chairman Thomas Frisardi said Lincoln and Weston, as well as blue-chip urban neighborhoods such as Beacon Hill and Harvard Square, have implemented far-more-stringent building bans and seen assessments climb skyward.

"Wellesley is desirable for its location," Frisardi said. "We have no doubt development will continue to be a constant pressure."

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.