ORLEANS – A local business owner is battling with the Town of Orleans over the status of his establishment’s sign.
Scott Feen is the owner of the Atlantic Workshop, which is located along Main Street. The shop offers unique furniture, art, and more. Prior to moving to Orleans with his family, Feen had been doing work in Chatham for a decade.
Feen describes the workshop as a “customary home occupation” and a dream job. The site has the same address as the Feen residency, as the workshop is in a residential zone.
Neighbors emphasized that the shop is located in a residential district and that when Feen operated a shop in Chatham, the shop was located in a business district.
This has been a point of contention between Feen, town officials, and neighbors in recent years.
Feen claims that all steps provided by Orleans officials have been followed to this point, adding that opponents have been hindering his business’ ability to integrate into the local community.
Those opponents claim that Feen has been allowed by the town to run his shop in a residential zone under the notion that the shop is related to a traditional home-based business, which they state it is not.
Conditions in years past have been imposed on the workshop by the Orleans Zoning Board of Appeals, Feen said.
“Those conditions made it very tough to have a business,” Feen said.
“In essence, any other business would have failed.”
Those conditions in the past included ceasing operations daily at 6 p.m., keeping Feen as the lone full-time employee, and prohibiting signs advertising the services.
Neighbors said that his signage is against the town code and that him wanting to solicit business from his home in a residential district is going too far.
The board also required an annual review of the conditions up until this past November, as the annual review for the Atlantic Workshop has been done away with.
Still, Feen said that opponents have persisted. He added that those against the sign–a capsized boat with the workshop’s name printed on it–would negatively impact the neighborhood, which he described as a commerce center.
Dealing with that “hostility,” he explained, has been a challenge.
“We thought we’d be adding to the community, and certainly not taking away from it,” Feen said.
Neighbors in the community said that the structure Feen built and his business model do not correspond to the description of a customary home occupation.
They state that the town placed restrictions in an effort to “retain the residential character of the neighborhood”.
In the latest developments, the Zoning Board of Appeals is set to take the situation up once more with Feen and neighbors on Wednesday. Feen and the town are also going to court over the issue with the sign on October 18 with the Orleans Superior Court.
Feen believes that these are issues being solved through arbitrary lawsuits initiated by a vocal minority, which puts an unnecessary debt burden on taxpayers.
His neighbors said that notion is “inaccurate” as Feen is the only one who has sought any court action to date.
“I’m not asking for anything beyond what every other single business in this town has been granted,” Feen explained.
“I’m asking for what’s fair, and for a few people to say, ‘No, we’ll fight you for years on this and use other taxpayer’s money to do so,’ that seems ridiculous to me.”
Still, some neighbors said that the solution is clear.
“If Mr. Feen want to run his commercial enterprise in a residential zone, he should abide by the terms of his permit; if he cannot make his business work with these conditions, he should move it to a commercial zone,” said one neighbor.
A call to the Town of Orleans for comments on the issue was not returned.
About Brendan Fitzpatrick
