Your cartoon of the bulldozer was a perfect description of how the present Sussex County Council is allowing unbridled development at the expense of quality of life of local residents. In a recent phone call I had with the state police complaining about a small tractor leveling ground at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening at the building site of the new Holiday Inn Express, I was told that unless I am in a town (which Midway is not), the county has no restrictions on how many days and how many hours a construction crew may work.
All of your readers (except the developers and landowners) know there is too much development and too many hotels being built. The trouble is that the small group of wealthy and well-connected business owners, landowners and developers are using their influence and coziness with elected officials to get whatever they want.
Let’s look at the new Holiday Inn Express going up on the old Miller’s Storage site in Midway. God only knows how Sussex officials approved such a big hotel on such a small parcel. Because the property was already zoned commercial, there were neither hearings nor any requirement for residential input on this project. And there is seemingly no problem about the fact that the entire hotel is wood, even the stairways.
The hotel is being built right next to residences, and it seems the family building this monstrosity could care less that it will loom over the neighboring homes with the only requirement being a six-foot fence. This throws the burden for privacy on the homeowners who will have hotel guests able to gaze into their back yards. The four-story hotel will loom over the three homes and the county does not require any other form of privacy landscaping to protect homeowners other than a skimpy six-foot fence.
I feel for the residents of the East Atlantic Apartments who lost their small barrier of trees to now be totally exposed to the noise and lack of privacy because of the commercial buildings which contain places like Rosenfeld’s Deli and the second building which contains Urban Float. The apartment residents are now subjected to the noise of the highway and the glare of parking lot lights with not a single tree or barrier other than the ridiculous six-foot fence.
One of the most obvious solutions to stop all this is to stop electing business people to the Sussex County Council. The question is whether the local Republican majority in Sussex is smart enough to see the connection between constantly voting for GOP businessmen, real estate agents and old-timers with little vision of how to develop with residents in mind and avoid the overdevelopment and mismanagement currently taking place. I certainly hope so.
Ron Nicholls
Rehoboth Beach
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