7960832665?profile=originalABOVE: The construction fence was gone, but the dumpster and portable toilet remained at the 3140 Polo Drive construction site Nov. 23. BELOW: The sign above Peter Klein’s front door vents about the duration of the 3-year-old project.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Steve Plunkett

The green-shrouded chain-link privacy fence surrounding 3140 Polo Drive, what is easily the town’s longest-running single-family home construction project, came down just before Thanksgiving, but there’s no promise of when the front lawn will be green.

“The last thing that’s going in is the grass because [the new owners] don’t want anybody walking on it, any other contractors walking on it,” Town Manager Greg Dunham said in a Nov. 9 update for town commissioners.

Dunham, who had been lobbying owners James and Jennifer Cacioppo to grade and landscape their property as soon as possible so the fence could be removed, said the latest delay came from installing columns and a wall around the two-story house’s paver driveway. Each column had a specially sized cap for the top, and workers cemented them into position while the construction manager was away.

“Each piece has a specific spot they’re supposed to go, and they put them on in the wrong place. So they had to take them off,” Dunham said.

7960832690?profile=originalRedoing the caps delayed putting in landscaping, which delayed grading the front yard, Dunham said. But “they are landscaping in the back. You just can’t see it,” he said.

Dunham said the Cacioppos got the building permit for their 8,560-square-foot house in February 2016. Town Commissioner Paul Lyons noted that meant the three-year anniversary of construction is coming.

“They’re in a race with the house [at 528 Palm Way] at this point in time,” Dunham said half-seriously. The contractor for Gary Cantor, that home’s owner, filed notice of demolishing the previous structure in late May. The shell of Cantor’s new one-story Bermuda-style home is already up.

Lyons and Commissioner Joan Orthwein both have said residents are complaining about the slow progress at 3140 Polo Drive.
Peter Klein, who lives across the street, says the work passed its three-year mark months ago. Site-clearing started in February 2016, he said, but the previous home was demolished in August 2015.

“We have been looking at that cyclone fence for years,” said Klein, who hung a yellow banner on the front of his house exhorting the Cacioppos to “Finish the Job!”

Klein and his wife, Jennifer, bought their property in 2011 and tore down and rebuilt in just over 12 months, he said.
The Cacioppos have given their contractor more than 100 change orders, he said he has been told. “Entire rooms have been ripped out and redone. I have seen it firsthand,” Klein said.

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