CAMBRIDGE — The house at 408 Guelph Ave. in Cambridge has been an empty, rundown eyesore for years.

Neighbours wanted it gone.

But now a developer wants to put up a 24-unit townhouse project there and it’s not quite what the neighbourhood had in mind.

The three-storey, stacked townhouse structure is too big for the area and doesn’t quite fit in with the single-family homes surrounding it, residents lamented.

And most politicians at Tuesday’s planning and development committee felt no differently.

“We need to see a better compromise,” Coun. Nicholas Ermeta said.

When the proposal first came to committee in June, residents wanted the project set back further from the street, with fewer units and more parking.

They argued it didn’t really look like a townhouse complex.

On Tuesday, Mayor Doug Craig said he agreed.

“It’s very much like an apartment,” he said.

So the planning committee struck a neighbourhood subcommittee in June.

It met twice over the summer (with city staff and their ward councillor) and ideally was supposed to get residents and the developer to work out their issues and come to a compromise.

The neighbourhood-committee method has resolved similar disputes in the past.

It just didn’t seem to work this time.

Lisa Harlock complained the meetings were anything but compromising.

“There was no discussion,” she said. Residents were shown a presentation and that was it.

“At no point was a developer held accountable.”

The developer, JENC Investments Inc., asked to go above density limits in the area — 14 units — so they can build 24.

But some councillors thought that was asking for too much.

“I’m really struggling with the fact that this will set precedent for similar infill developments in the city,” Coun. Jan Liggett said.

She asked the developer’s consultant, Dave Aston, if it can cut back on profits and make the project smaller to please unhappy residents.

Aston said the developer chose to design a 24-unit structure because it’s economically feasible. The plan so far is to sell townhouses as condominiums.

“It’s a changing and evolving neighbourhood … people want to live there,” he said.

The set-back can be pushed further from the street so the building isn’t too imposing, Aston said. The project’s layout can also be changed slightly to add more trees and shrubs for neighbours’ privacy.

Aston said it isn’t much wider than nearby houses, at 17 metres across. He compared it to homes across the street between 17 and 27 metres wide.

“The frontage will be comparable,” he explained.

Committee deferred the proposal until January and asked the developer and residents to sit down one more time to try to come up with a reasonable compromise.