Northside development
The owner of this house wants to demolish it and four other units on the property to build new houses.
A proposed property development at the corner of N 15th St and Berryessa Rd has caught the attention of nnasj, and was also a discussion topic at tonight’s 13th Street Neighborhood Advisory Committee (NAC) meeting. The property owner wants to demolish five homes, currently rental units, and build in their place four new detached homes.
The property currently contains two Spanish-style bungalows, one of which has three attached apartments. The courtyard between the two buildings is paved and used for parking. The three apartments look to be incredibly small, maybe only one or two rooms each, and built with minimal architectural detail at minimum cost. The two bungalows, though, presumably are considerably older, and have the kind of style that would make them terrifically desirable if they were only freshly painted and located in Willow Glen.
The owner wants to knock all of that down and replace it with four contemporary two-story houses. In a neighborhood dominated by bungalows, the planning department have somehow concluded that the impact of this change on the “existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings” would be “less than significant”, which is at least a highly debatable conclusion.
On the one hand, the proposed new houses will likely fit right in with the Modern Ice townhome development across the street. It does look likely to increase the number of homeowners and reduce the number of rental units in the neighborhood. And it is a characteristic of the Northside that it developed slowly over time, and pretty much all architectural styles from Victorian to contemporary are found in the neighborhood.
But, the early twentieth-century bungalow style is the predominant one in the Northside, and this project proposes demolishing two fairly nice bungalows. This will change the appearance of the Northside as seen by the new residents moving in to Modern Ice, or visiting the new city park across the street.
Furthermore, from an environmental perspective, demolishing and landfilling perfectly serviceable buildings is a colossal waste. Even if the new houses have every environmental feature from double-paned windows to solar panels, they will take years to make up for the energy and natural resource consumption of building them.
As far as I can see, a best-case scenario would be to demolish the three miniature rear units, leaving two Spanish-style bungalows. Then, remove the concrete paved courtyard from the middle of the property and landscape it nicely. Subdivide the property into two lots and sell them to committed owners. Without the cost of building any new structures, hopefully these two renovated homes could pay off just as well for the owner as building four new houses.
Realistically, I doubt if community input is going to change the fate of this property. If the owner is determined to demolish his houses and build new ones there’s not much we can do about it. But, shoehorning four houses into this lot is going to require the owner to get variances from normal building codes; and the community can and should require concessions from the owner (such as designing the new houses to architecturally match the neighborhood) in return for those variances.
Matt, one solution to save the houses and let the property owner build what they have planned, would be for those who want to save the bungalows to offer to buy them and move them off the property. (Putting their money where your mouth is, so to speak). This would be a win-win for everyone. If it is financially viable to find a lot and move the two bungalows to it, I’m sure someone will do it. If it is not, then the fate of the bungalows it pretty much sealed. Another compromise would be for the city to require the new homes on the lot to fit in with the surrounding architecture, and preserve the style that is presently on the lot. This would still allow the property owner to develop the land as desired with little impact to his construction cost.
Jeff,
Thanks for your comment. You’re absolutely right about the city requiring the new homes to match the style of existing nearby homes. That’s exactly why the planning progress takes input from the community, like at the NAC meeting last night.
Because they will need to exceed normal planning limits (for example, property line setbacks) to do what they want, the community does have an opportunity to require compromises from the developer before the project is approved.
The idea of moving these houses, though, has a couple of problems. First is that the cost of moving a house can be near the same as building a new one, so it really only makes sense when the home has significant historical value. If there’s some existing homes on one lot, and an empty lot available, wouldn’t it make more sense if the developer just left the older homes where they are and used the empty lots for the new construction?
Second is that putting these bungalows in neighborhoods full of ranch houses or contemporary townhomes wouldn’t make any more sense than putting contemporary townhomes in the middle of the Northside. So we’d have to find empty lots in existing older neighborhoods to re-site these houses. But, empty lots are few and far between, and so it would make more sense to hold on to them for cases where historical homes, for example in the core downtown, are facing demolition and can be moved instead.
You do have a point about the cost of moving the cottages, as well as finding a appropriate lot to put them on. The other option is to offer to buy the lot as is from the present owner and save/restore the cottages. My guess is that it is not economically feasible for the present owner to save the two cottages and only develop the other half of the lot. Unfortunately economics often win out over preservation when it comes to real estate development.