David Andreatta

@david_andreatta

In The Cider House Rules, the John Irving novel and film starring Michael Caine, the major theme is that people, not government, define the rules by which they live.

The theme is woven throughout the story, but is most stark when illiterate cider house workers realize their house rules were written by employers who don't know anything about the workers' lives.

That brings us to Penfield, where the town planning board's recent approval of a proposed 2,600-square-foot cider house, a small barn and 530-tree apple orchard at the intersection of Sweets Corners and Dublin roads has a couple hundred residents reaching for pitchforks and torches. One filed a lawsuit.

At the intersection now is a whole lot of nothing. Twenty-seven acres of nothing, to be precise. The parcel was once used to farm grapes, but today is speckled with weeds and wildflowers, just like most of the parcels around it.

In approving the cider house, the board set 35 conditions, or rules, the cider house must follow that range from having ramps for disabled customers to complying with the town tree-planting policy and not playing music outdoors.

But cider house opponents contend the planning board just doesn't understand that enjoying an unobstructed view of weeds and wildflowers and the tranquility that comes with it is integral to their daily lives.

"The whole thing is we don't want it," said Jeff Cady, who lives nearby. "We all moved out there to be away from any of that stuff. Put it in a business district. This is rural."

On Jan. 5, another resident, Kevin Gallagher, filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court that contends the Planning Board "failed to properly review this project, failed to protect the rights of the residents and taxpayers and has not acted in good faith."

The lawsuit doesn't specify what rights the board trampled. But the rhetoric of cider house opponents throughout this dispute suggests they believe they have a right to look at weeds and wildflowers at Sweets Corners and Dublin roads for the rest of their natural-born lives.

"When someone moves into a town or buys a house, they have an expectation that the neighborhood they're moving into is going to stay that way," Gallagher said. "That's not always necessarily the case … but in this case, the residents have a reasonable expectation because the property is supposed to be protected."

No, they don't.

It's true that the owners of the land, small-batch cider producers and husband and wife Christian and Christina Krapf, can't do whatever they want with their property.

The land is subject to a "conservation easement agreement" with the town. That agreement, struck in 2002, limits the property to agricultural use and construction of buildings to those that support such use.

That includes, according to the agreement, "a winery for the processing and sale of wine."

Here's where opponents pounce to contend a cidery isn't the same as a winery.

Penfield residents decry cider house plan

That a winery produces wine and a cidery produces cider is the only thing that distinguishes one from the other. In terms of functionality, they're a distinction without a difference.

Cider and wine are both made from the juice of crushed fruit. In fact, some businesses produce cider and wine and simultaneously bill themselves as a "cidery and winery."

"In loose interpretation, yeah, they're very similar," Gallagher acknowledged. "But the conservation agreement is a legal document, and it's specifying 'winery.'"

They won't win that argument. Nor should they. There's nothing about an apple orchard and a couple of buildings the size of houses sitting on 27 acres that's out of step with the easement agreement or incompatible with what's already in the Sweets Corners area.

Easement agreements, like other zoning laws, are designed to protect property owners from development that's out of character with their neighborhood. Some go too far. Some don't go far enough.

But no one living next to vacant land they don't own should expect the land to stay empty for the rest of their natural-born lives. The only way to ensure that is to buy the land.

Then they can make the rules.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.