After three-year battle, township man dismantles tree

VERNON-Back in the spring of 2002, Fred Hemmerich set out to build his children a tree house; he used his imagination and his resources and built the best one that he could, a virtual tree palace with an enclosed "house" connected to an elevated platform by a long footbridge. Unfortunately the only ones happy with the result were the Hemmerichs. The family's next door neighbor, Tom D'Arcy, who has declined to be interviewed, complained to the Township of Vernon because he objected to the structure overhanging his property. So began a bitter and protracted legal battle which resulted in Hemmerich having to partially dismantle the tree house to comply with a ruling handed down by Superior Court Judge N. Peter Conforti last Dec. 7. "I was supposed to have the walls and the sides off the tree house by Jan. 29, but with the bad weather I asked the town for an extension, which they agreed to," Hemmerich said last weekend. "This weekend we are doing what they want, and I hope that they will at least let me put a railing around the platform for safety reasons." After the neighbor's complaint, the Vernon code enforcement officer determined that the structure was beyond the scope of what is considered a tree house with regard to size, construction and location, and though it did not require a building permit, it did require a zoning permit as an accessory structure. Hemmerich had argued that he went to the town on at least two occasions over the past three years and was told that he did not need a building permit. "The sad thing is that this could all have been avoided if the building department had told me that though I didn't need a permit from them I should check to see if I needed a zoning permit; the departments are about ten feet form each other," he said. In January, Dorrie Fox, the Vernon Township zoning officer, conceded that Hemmerich may well have been told that he didn't need a building permit. "A building permit is not required for anything 100 square feet or below, however a zoning permit is required," she said. On Saturday morning as Hemmerich's seven-year-old son Dominick helped his dad take out some of the items that had up to now decorated the inside of the tree house, he didn't have much to say about the whole thing but he did express one sentiment to his dad. "I just wish that we had got to sleep in it one more time," he said. Hemmerich was sad to be dismantling what he thought would be a place for his kids and their friends to play for many years to come, but said he wasn't bitter. He just said that he would do one thing differently if given the chance. "I am abiding by the law because I have no choice, but if I had to do it over again, I would get myself a good zoning lawyer because I feel that the courts don't want to listen to a layman," he said. "I'm being forced to do something there are no codes for."