Medusa Building is not part of Forest Hill

To the Editor:

I’m writing in response to Mike Reilly’s opinion piece in the May issue of the Heights Observer (“Forest Hill can be the next Tremont”).

The Medusa Building has nothing to do with the Forest Hill Home Owners (FHHO) association.

If Mike Reilly wants a spotlight on himself, and free publicity for his contracting business, let him take ads in the Observer rather than smear the very neighborhood he lives in. There are only a small number of residents who have drunk his venomous Kool-Aid. The rest are living peaceably as they have for years. 

If the Forest Hill Home Owners Inc. is a “volunteer-based social club,” as Reilly described it, so be it.

The association was founded on the premise that residents would—through cooperation, not coercion—maintain properties with care and discretion.

Mr. Reilly now owns 12 properties in Forest Hill, a number which itself devalues other properties, since there are transient occupants. There have been complaints that his properties are rented for limited periods of time, and his website states that five days is the minimum rental. Mr. Reilly makes no financial contributions to the association, while homeowner-residents typically contribute, voluntarily, at least $75 a year.

Mr. Reilly has disrupted FHHO business meetings, and made it impossible to advance, threatening officers and the association itself with lawsuits. At a recent meeting to which Reilly’s “reform caucus” was invited to state its views, two of its members railed at the vice president for 90 minutes (violating the “non-harassment” policy, which was approved in 2016), defeating any progress for the meeting.

The Medusa Building is not within the confines of Forest Hill. If Reilly wants to purchase that property from Motorcars and develop it, it might make positive changes for the area, but just [talking] about it, as he has for several years, will not make that happen; it is an issue entirely separate from the governance of Forest Hill properties.