Totally agree with others that a removable teak wood bench would be nicer anyway and save you a lot of trouble.

That's great to hear, thanks :)

Are most of the people at AMC meetups usually in pretty solid hiking shape? I enjoy hiking but haven't been in a few years, and generally even in more active times I've never been fast, so I would just hate to be the loser holding everyone up (or left in their dust)

Probably still depends on what's in the lease though, because if it says you can't use your own units, then they can probably levy some other kind of fee for "violating the lease."

Interesting to see that nobody really knows exactly what's happening with it. I've wondered every time I've driven by. Seems weird that they don't post something on the construction fences making it obvious.

Information AND sources! Very cool, thanks!

It just sucks that somehow you're supposed to find the time and energy to become a part of a board you may want nothing to do with, just to keep them from exerting undue power over a really essential part of your life.

This is where you get together every single person in your building/neighborhood/whatever that's subject to these same fees and let them know that for however long they've lived there, they've been getting overcharged x amount due to this fraud being perpetrated by the HOA. Sure, you might feel like the dollar amount isn't that much to you, but it's still money that rightfully belongs to you and not the HOA per their own rules, and it certainly adds up when you multiply that by every person paying it. I'm not a lawyer, but wonder what threshold it would need to reach before y'all would be able to file a class action suit. If it's a big HOA management type company on the backend, how many other people might be getting hit with these same bogus fee overages? It's worth fighting this and it's worth seeing how far it goes because HOAs are fucking evil.

I really really hope y'all can find a new space! A&C is a great store and it would be a tragedy to see it go. There's a storefront at 77 Broadway in Somerville that used to house a trophy shop and seems to have been vacated recently. I've never been inside, so no idea if there's a larger interior space that could be made workable for A&C's inventory, but might be worth checking out!