A reader asks ...

I gather from reading your post that your objection is that the house being built on Landor is a speculative house that will go up for sale. Would you still have a problem if someone removed the house to build a new home for their family?

Would that it was so simple. ...

What we know so far is that families have been buying and renovating homes in these neighborhoods quite happily for the past 20-40 years. We know that construction companies have been doing a good business in town. We know that the renovations are exciting and creative and strengthen the character because they tend to respect the history.

We know that this has been a desirable area with steadily rising property values. We know that people want to live here because of that indefinable character thing. We know that because they say it. Visitors come to the house and say, "I love this neighborhood."

We know that the neighborhood changes are a one-way street, so to speak. Once the mature hardwoods are gone, it will take a lifetime to grow them back. Once the old ambiance is dumped, it will take a lifetime to age back. We know that.

We know that once certain residents have to sell, they will not be able to come back, not matter how long they lived here.

We know it has something to do with being older. We know it has something to do with being settled. We know it has something to do with a sense of passion about living in a place that does not have it all, but has such depth and value in what matters to those who choose to call this home. Why else would people want to live in smaller homes on small lots, and pay more for the privilege?

So we struggle to put a finger on what exactly it is that is ripping the heart out of our older neighborhoods.

They might as well have found oil under our land. A land rush is on and we're sitting on the gold. Some are wondering if they want OUR neighborhood, or do they wish to replace us with THEIR neighborhood. Thoughts like that have never happened here, unless a commercial development was looming near.

What makes a speculative house stand out is usually 3 things -- 1) lot scraping, 2) a financing sign, 3) a house that does not try to blend style, size or price-wise with the street.

A resident-buyer may very well do all 3 of these things for themselves, but a resident will be living in the home as a neighbor and will have the burden of payments, taxes, landscaping, and relationships with the neighborhood. So, as a general (very) rule, folks who buy homes tend to make decisions in a way that speculators do not.

FP has observed some outliers to this theory. Just as she has observed some beautifully thought out speculative homes, she has seen some outlandish private developments. But one thing is really troubling. One teardown seems to bring on another and another. If the new house(s) are way outside the original price-point, the older houses start looking like sitting ducks. And the hunters are not far away.

FP has observed beautifully renovated older homes become sandwiched in by huge structures, each of which represents a completely novel style of architecture for the neighborhood. Someone is not thinking clearly; people in older neighborhoods have rarely made drastic changes that would affect their neighbors without consideration of the impact.

Clearly the "rules" have changed.

So how do you approach a loss of sensitivity and respect, do you resort to using regulations? Wish on stars?

So here is the real irony. The people who are doing the thing to our neighborhoods say they can do this because the regulations allow it. But when the planning department looks into the regulations to see if our ordinances really protect the rights of residents with investments on the ground in existing neighborhoods, the outcry is shrill, and that outcry is very business-related in its perspective.

Regulations may not be such a bad thing if they are measured well and protect equally the rights of each party predictably.

But Fallonia does agree, she would rather live in a world that needs far fewer of them.

Does it get better than this?

I am posting this to show where strict philosophical / political POV meets the ground. In the ground's own words.

Thank you so much, but...
Published:
Monday, April 21, 2008 12:16 PM CDT | Jefferson Post
We have seen with concern a remarkable amount of outside interest in what is purely and simply a local matter: the upcoming vote on the county transfer tax.

We have received several letters to the editor from groups in Raleigh opposing the tax. We have deferred publication of these, only to give space to letters on both sides from local citizens.

Now we have in hand a study on the subject done by the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based conservative/libertarian think tank.

We appreciate all this interest, but it is our position that the citizens of Ashe County are quite capable of deciding how they wish to be taxed without all this outside help. One wonders where these groups were back in the fall of 2001, when our county was shattered by plant closings and West Jefferson’s downtown had far too many “for rent” signs in storefronts.

Historically, Raleigh tends to ignore us here, which is generally fine with us. A notable exception is Jim Long, commisssioner of Insurance, who has done so much for our local fire departments and rescue squads. Now we seem to have suddenly become the focus of quite a few folks inside the Raleigh Beltline.

The transfer tax issue is fairly simple. We face some financial challenges in this county, specifically paying for two major capital projects, the new law enforcement center and the library expansion. Both are important and necessary -- though we believe the services offered by the improved library will, in the future, reduce the need for a jail here. At the same time, county government is facing the same staggering cost of gas and fuel oil we are all facing. That is the reality.

We, as citizens of the county, must pay these bills. The question is how -- by increasing the ad valorem (property) tax or having a transfer tax for non-family land sales. We do not believe this is all such a mystery that our citizens are not capable of deciding how we, as a county, shall pay our bills.

We hope our new-found friends in Raleigh will not forget us after May 6, as we struggle to deal with the serious layoffs and transfers now taking place at Leviton. We trust they will have the same interest, as we struggle to face this and many other challenges here in the “Lost Province.”

Here

Teardown Watch

Cutting through Drewry Hills I turn the corner at Landor and notice, first, the urban Renewal signs, perhaps 3 on one lot. The house has been missing for several months now. It was the RR signs that alerted me that something speculative was on its way.

Here is the history:

Zoning R-4
Acreage .40
Permit Date 12/19/2007
Permit # 0000071343

Transfer Information
Deed Date 7/31/2007
Pkg Sale Date 7/31/2007
Pkg Sale Price $609,000

Land Value Assessed $603,750
Bldg. Value Assessed
Total Value Assessed $603,750

Take a stroll through the neighborhood here and you can get a sense of its current character.


View Larger Map

Just around the bend is Marlowe Rd, which is getting a bump in prestige these days as the site of several new estate-style homes. It seemed to begin on the short spur of highrise homes near the greenway that were an infill development, say, 7 years ago. Ironically, several homeowners on W. Drewry Lane who were now looking at houses instead of protected flood-plain woodlands (FP note here: how does this happen?) commented at the time that while they did not understand this trend in large houses, to each their own. They did not know at the time that their neighborhood could be redeveloped in this way.

So this is one of two teardown lots with urban Renewal signs on them on W Drewry, and there is one house for rent on E Drewry with a yellow sign too. Drewry Hills, the Teardown Watch is for you. The real estate activity in your neighborhood shows signs of coming redevelopment. If you watch these properties you can get a sense of the intent for your neighborhood.

At $600K purchase price, this will likely be a $2M house. How long can you afford to call this neighborhood home?

. . .


RESEARCH UPDATE: Permit plans indicate a 8114 SF house is being built here.

8 1 1 4 ... W O W

Did FP mention that one owner of this project is a prominent spokesperson for personal rights by way of Renewal of Raleigh....

Quiz Answer

It is not easy to find -- the answer is here.

And if that inspires further research, your journey can be started here.

Pop Quiz

Where are these goals stated?

• To recognize and promote the contributions of neighborhoods to the unique identity of Raleigh.
  
• To promote and guide Raleigh's path toward optimum conservation and utilization of all its resources.
  
• To encourage proper respect for human dignity.
  
• To recognize open space, recreation and culture as essential needs for the enrichment of human lives and to promote the availability of a broad range of recreational and cultural opportunities for all citizens.
  
• To encourage, through both private and public initiatives, policies and programs for the development of affordable housing for all citizens.
  

You may choose only one:

1. Magna Carta
2. SCALE manifesto
3. Renew Raleigh 
4. Something to do with the city
5. Preservation NC

Does this sound familiar?

Influx of new large homes has eroded ... traditional look, some residents say
Some suggest voluntary design guidelines

Inadvertent window peeping can be a hazard of living next to a "McMansion," say ... residents who recently listed it as a major gripe about new homes in their ... community.

"I can see right into my neighbors' bedroom, and they don't seem to care," said a resident who lives next to a super-sized new house.

While conceding that they sound like the town's "good taste police," the residents gathered at ... Hall to develop a set of voluntary home-design guidelines for new home builders.

Among their dislikes: Fake Palladian windows, bulging turrets and oversize stone balusters. Such elements clash with the character of ... traditional homes, especially the beloved, but vanishing, century-old Victorians, sprawling ranches, stately Georgians and palatial Tudors, the residents said.

Geolly gee. What is going on here? How about this example from Winnetka. "Perhaps no single tear-down better exemplifies what Winnetka is losing than the planned demolition of a Walnut Street home built in 1910 built for John L. Hamilton, a partner of famed Prairie School architect Dwight Perkins. ... Harder still, some say, is what replaces them: behemoths plopped in the midst of traditional homes where critics say they stand out like sore thumbs," the story adds.

This entire article can be found at www.chicagotribune.com

The guidelines are a novel approach that neighboring Glencoe and a handful of other suburban towns have taken recently to attempt to influence what goes up in their back yards without violating anyone's property rights. Whether it works is debatable.

"I don't think the process has prevented the mega-mansion from being built next door to the little ranch house, but if people want to participate, it may result in more compatibility with the existing neighborhood," Glencoe Village Manager Paul Harlow said.

That's a big 'if,' said Peter Wall, a North Shore Realtor who runs a Web site called www.teardowns.com, which specializes in matching potential tear-down properties to developers. As of this month, he had 1,380 Winnetka homes on his list of replaceable homes.

"I'm not even sure what the voluntary guidelines are," he said. "We look at what we can build on the property and what we could sell it for, and that dictates what happens to it."

Under pressure from its residents to have some say-so over what goes up in their neighborhoods, Winnetka adopted new zoning regulations a few years ago to put a lid on the sky's-the-limit approach to home building. It didn't do the trick.

"Instead of tall bad houses, we got short bad houses," said resident Chris Rintz, who is leading the town's latest effort to develop a brochure for newcomers that helps explain what Winnetkans like and dislike about new homes.

Note the definition of Value (from the OED). Money is not number one. "The Importance or preciousness of something." I like that.

An insufficient mansion?

A picture is worth a few words.

Col. Raynal Bolling, an architect of American air power in World War I, died of a German bullet in 1918. The aviator's Greenwich mansion, featuring 13 fireplaces and a shooting gallery, survived until 2007.

Hedge-fund manager Spencer Lampert spent $7.6 million to buy the home, designed by the same firm that created the New York Public Library. Then, last year, Mr. Lampert razed it to the ground. Asked to describe what he has in mind for the now-vacant six-acre lot, he said in an e-mail: "Planning on building a house."

...

In Greenwich, his sprawling estate with five stone chimneys was sometimes open to the public for teas and concerts hosted by his widow, Anna. By the 1960s, the colonel's offspring sold Greyledge, as the estate is known. "It was too big for continued use. There was an entire servants' wing," recalls Trish Twining, the colonel's granddaughter. "In the '60s, people didn't live that way."

In 2001, Greyledge was bought by Mr. Lampert, managing director of Tudor Investment Corp. (The hedge fund was founded by Paul Tudor Jones, who himself stunned many Greenwich residents in the 1990s by tearing down a waterfront home and building a 13,000-square-foot, dome-topped mansion it its place.)

Mr. Lampert -- no relation to hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert, another Greenwich resident -- says he initially wanted to preserve Col. Bolling's manor. "I designed a renovated Greyledge with a well-known architect," says Mr. Lampert, who currently lives down the street. "The cost [of renovating] was materially the same as or insignificantly different from building from scratch."

Last year, Greyledge disappeared.

From the Wall Street Journal Online:

Founded by English colonists in 1640, Greenwich evolved into an exclusive retreat from nearby New York. In 1848, a railroad linked the town to Manhattan. By the 1920s, Greenwich had one of the country's highest per capita incomes.

One of the earlier arrivals from New York was James McCutcheon, who made a fortune in the linen trade. In 1886, a Boston architect built him a house of rough-faced granite blocks and archways. Nils Kerchus, a consultant to the nonprofit Greenwich Historical Society, says he scoured Connecticut for another residential specimen of the style -- Richardsonian-Romanesque, like Boston's landmark Trinity Church -- but found none.

In December, Rene Kern, managing director of the General Atlantic hedge fund, bought the property for $10.2 million. The seller was Arthur Malley, whose family had purchased it from the McCutcheons in 1927. Mr. Malley says his broker told him that Mr. Kern and his wife planned to renovate the house.

In February, according to town records, Mr. Kern applied for a demolition permit.

The city's Historic District Commission imposed a 90-day stay to encourage the new owners to reconsider. "I compare it to someone demolishing the pyramids in Egypt," Mr. Malley says.

Mr. Kern declined to comment. A General Atlantic spokeswoman says Mr. Kern and his wife "continue to evaluate all options for their home."