A resident is suing the town of Scarborough in an attempt to decrease the size of a development project in his neighborhood.

Dave Hughes and his neighbors on Hunneywell Road want the proposed 18-bed hospice house proposed for their road reduced from 18 beds to between six and 12. Hughes said neighbors support him in the suit.

His neighborhood is small, he said, with a total of 23 homes. The traffic effects of placing a 16,000 square foot hospice house in his neighborhood is like adding 30 extra homes, he said. That’s an additional 236 trips a day generated by the hospice.

“It’s much too large…if you triple traffic going by your house, your quality of life is really going to go down,” he said.

Hughes is suing the town because he said the special exception granted the hospice house failed to follow lawful procedures. The zoning board, which granted the special exception, did not make hospice prove they met the guidelines for special exception, said Hughes. “They didn’t follow protocol,” he said.

Hughes said he wasn’t opposed to a hospice, but he’s worried about how it will affect his neighborhood. “It’s just a big building that will create a lot of traffic…it sounds kind of harsh, but it’s still a business located in a residential neighborhood.”