Marc and Joan Hendel spent decades of savings and two years waiting for their Cape Cod home to be built.

In February, they moved into the brand new Bourne house. After years far away in Iowa, they settled into the upper Cape, close to their New England roots, their families and the beach. A “perfect, ideal place.”

Just a month later, a letter arrived taking that home away.

“On March, 3, we were delivered an eminent domain letter by MassDOT, hand delivered at our door,” said Joan Hendel. “We were shocked. We were stunned. We had no idea that this was even in the plan, or in the works, or our home could be taken after just building it.”

The Hendels are one of 13 property owners whose homes are being taken under eminent domain proceedings for the Sagamore Bridge replacement project.

The Sagamore and Bourne bridges, which are both 90-year-old federally-owned structures stretching across Cape Cod Canal, are each slated for long-planned replacements through a partnership between the Army Corps of Engineers and the state.

The Sagamore Bridge project is expected to break ground first, said Luisa Paiewonsky, the state’s executive director of megaprojects.

The state expects to receive environmental permits and approvals for the $2.4 billion project by 2026 before moving into the procurements phase through 2027 and be approved to start work in 2028, Paiewonsky said.

The first phase of the Cape Cod Bridge program included public meetings, stakeholder briefings and outreach as early as June 2021 — years before the Hendels would purchase their Cape Cod home.

“We’re not ones to take risks,” said Joan Hendel. “We would have never have ever — we put our whole life savings into this house. We would never done that, had we had even a hint of that this would be something that we’d have to deal with down the road. Not even a chance, because we don’t gamble with things.”

“We planned to never, ever move again, ever,” Marc Hendel said. “This was our forever home. We customized it.”

No one told them of the bridge project during the purchase or the building, the Hendels said.

In the Hendels’ purchase and sale agreement documents, reviewed by the Herald, the seller signs off that he was not aware of “current or future assessments/betterments for public improvements presently affecting or anticipated to affect the Premises” or “unrecorded easements, rights of ways, or restrictions affecting the premises.”

The March 3 notice was followed by a second notice two days later: “As you may be aware, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has a roadway improvement project proposed that is adjacent to real estate owned by you. Please accept this letter as notice that your property will be affected by this project.”

“We started going neighbor to neighbor, asking if they also received letters,” said Joan Hendel. And we thought, well, we have to band together as a neighborhood and fight this thing.”

Most of the neighborhood knew “there was talk about doing the bridge project,” but many were upset, she said, noting that “most of the people in our neighborhood have been there for generations.”

“We have one woman who is 89 years old, widowed about 10 years ago,” said Marc Hendel. “She is totally lost. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She is very concerned. We have another woman who’s older and single, and runs a business out of her home. That’s getting taken away.”

Marc and Joan said they’re the only brand new house moved into the neighborhood. They decided to moved to the Cape after Marc’s youngest daughter graduated from college, the Hendels said, calling the beach area “our happy place.”

“It was just a perfect, ideal place,” said Marc Hendel. “We just needed to be out back in New England. We missed the culture, we missed the people, we missed the beach, and we missed our family.”

Now the future they though they had is suddenly up in the air.

They wrote to political representatives all the way up to the president, the Hendels said, and only heard back from state Rep. Steven Xiarhos, who they call a “godsend.”

“He has pushed for information that MassDOT was unwilling to give us,” Marc Hendel said. “He wants to make sure they treat us fairly with respect, which, unfortunately, there’s been some –”

“They haven’t,” Joan said.

The taking of 13 homes is “fairly large,” Paiewonsky said, noting she is “not aware of any other case in which we have taken this many homes with with a single project.”

“What makes this different is that the new Sagamore Bridge is being built directly next to the existing Sagamore Bridge, because we cannot shut down the existing bridge while we’re building a new one,” said Paiewonsky. … “We looked at a lot of different options and alignment, and we chose the one with the fewest property impacts.”

If they had built on the other side of the bridge, even more homes would have been uprooted, Paiewonsky said. The land will be used for equipment like cranes, as well as permanent needs like detention ponds and drainage infrastructure, she said.

“We’re trying to minimize our impacts on people,” said Paiewonsky. “In this case, given the massive size of the bridge, touching down in a densely settled area, the impact, unfortunately, was unavoidable.”

The Hendels said there are “alternative plans available that do not destroy this neighborhood.”

“We are not against the bridges project,” said Joan Hendel. “We are against taking our land to store heavy equipment.”

Joan Hendel called the use ultimately a “it’s a waste of our house and our neighborhood and the history of the area.”

The Hendels and the other neighbors will be offered a sum based on appraisals of the homes.

“We’re subject to federal requirements known as the ‘Uniform Act’ governing property taking, and we’re also regulated by the state,” said Paiewonsky. “So both sets of regulations are designed to protect the property owner and make sure that they get everything that they’re entitled to, including assistance with relocation, reimbursement for all relocation expenses, even down to the details, like if their mortgage rate is higher in their new home.”

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The Hendels said they don’t see another home on the Cape comparable to theirs, noting their house is brand new and the “housing market is extremely different now than it was even a couple of years ago when we bought this land and built this home.”

Joan Hendel said she has asked state officials to consider the human being concerns.

“You have come into our homes, and your people have sat in our homes, and they say they understand,” said Joan Hendel. “And I said, your people don’t understand. Unless you have experienced the horrific mental anguish that such a thing has done to all of us in this neighborhood you don’t understand.”

The Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, along with the Bourne Bridge are slated to be replaced beginning in 2027. (Mark Stockwell/The Boston Herald)