OT – Saving Intown Neighborhoods From Tasteless (Evil) Developers
I don’t usually post non-Macromedia related stuff in this category, but I really need some feedback here. As you can see, the house next to ours (ours is on the left) is being torn down. It was previously occupied by the rednecks that grew up in the house and was not maintained well at all. When the house finally sold after sitting vacant for over a year we knew that is was going to be kept as a habitat for squirrels or a tear down.
When we found the house was sold to a young couple and not a developer we breathed a sigh of relief. Then we found out that the new owner was a developer who planned to live there. Then we found out that the developer changed his mind and was building the house to be sold. Why are we so worried? See below.
This is the house across the street and a few houses down. The location was previously occupied by an old woman with dimentia and it was not well cared for for over 20 years. When she died after being assisted in care by the neighbor in the home to the right, the mysterious next of kin swarmed upon the house, removed anything of potential value (certainly leaving any rare/valuable architectual items for the bulldozer), and sold the house to a developer. It too was an obvious tear down project. As you can see this new house dwarfs the homes next to it and pushes the limits of what can legally be built on the property. We knew we were in trouble when the real estate sign (Marcy Shugarman/ReMax) advertised “ELEVATOR!” This house belongs about 30 miles from here in a suburb. Note the tiny patch of grass on the bottom right of the first image. This is what is left for for the yard. This was only modification a few neighbors could force based on existing zoning laws!
See the house above? Looks vulnerable doesn’t it? Well it’s a goner! It’s directly across the street from our house and it has just been sold to a developer. This guy is very famous in the neighborhood for building a particularly bad monstrosity about a quarter mile from here.
This is just what is happening within a few houses of our own! All throughout the beautiful intown neighborhoods of Atlanta perfectly good (and sometimes grand) homes are being razed for huge suburban style homes that generally cost 150 to 200 percent of the going cost of homes in the area. Large homes with yards and carriage houses are being torn down and replaced with three giant houses crammed onto one lot. They don’t fit in with the existing style of homes in the neighborhood and are in my opinion ruining it.
This doesn’t mean that this is the case everytime. Just most of the time. Houses can be restored and built onto tastefully. Checkout the house on the right in the very first image. They demolished everything in the house exept for the front, left, and right brick facade. They added a second story and rebuilt their house in a tasteful manner.
Now these developers have the right to buy and build whatever style of home they want as long as it meets local zoning laws. It’s a free Country and I’m definitely for entrepreneurship. This doesn’t mean that I should have to sit mute and not make people aware of what is happening.
What I’m looking for is groups that have already organized or advice on starting a group to raise awareness of this issue. Not just for our neighborhood, but for all of the intown Atlanta neighborhoods. We want to create yard signs, and a web site. We want to educate home buyers that they can renovate or rebuild their own properties and save a substantial amound of money. We want to find responsible real estate agents. We want to find responsible devlopers.
Please help me save our neighborhood!
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There’s an article on washingtonpost.com right now about this issue (your problem happens everywhere, including where I live in the D.C. area). I didn’t read the article this morning, but I see it’s on their site (entitled ‘McMansions to Be Scaled Back?’). It might provide you with some ideas.
Good luck. I completely understand where you’re coming from.
Leif,
Make no mistake that many of these houses are not rehabable and need to be torn down. Raising awareness of the displeasure that tacky suburban subdivision style homes cause to neighbors will hopefully cause developers to build more neighborhood appropriate new homes. A great example is the homes along North Avenue at the end of Freedom Parkway at Moreland in the Little Five Points area. I plan to post more examples of bad and good redevelopment (I think it’s called Infill) as well as the names of the developers that have created them.
On the other hand, in my neighborhood (in Atlanta also, for those of you who don’t know Brent or myself) developers are tearing down old mill houses, horribly built and kept 40 old houses (which were probably built after tearing down old mill houses) and a crack house or two to build outrageously large but beautiful houses. The lots are fairly big, so there isn’t a lot of “lot-busting” going on.
But I feel your pain. My lovely landlord could easily sell her lot to a developer (at any moment) and that developer could put TWO houses on the lot (I think that the zoning actually allows for that, believe it or not). And our state government isn’t making things better with their secret meetings with developers that they recently made legal. Ugh.
If I could go back in time, I’d buy a ton of houses in Midtown. I’d be RICH! Rich, I tell you! Who am I kidding? I’d go back in time to tell myself to avoid specific women, to never allow myslef to get fat and to skip college all-together.
I left the metro ATL area for the North GA mountains and more or less “involuntarily” built what some would call a McMansion. I did this in order to PRESERVE a 36 acre mountaintop that had been slated to be carved up into a subdivision of more than 30 lots. I had little choice in the matter if I wanted to meet this preservation goal…..turns out, mortgage companies will not consider more than 10 acres at MOST when calculating appraised value (many would only consider 5). The upshot of this practice is that to get a mortgage on any house that sits on a large area of land, you HAVE to build a bigger/fancier house in order for the structure-to-land values to work. Do not discount the fact that with the cost of land in some places, even working with smaller tracts, some developers may have little choice but to put much higher end housing on it than the existing surrounding structures in order to please the financial gods…..and in those cases, renovation is just not an option because it won’t produce the right ratios. NOT that I’m defending the practice, just saying, it isn’t just evil developers wanting to destroy the character of places–it’s also our financial institutions pushing them into corners, at least in some cases. I still have yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why land-to-structure values have to be what they are….but I did learn this is a NO EXCEPTIONS situation with mortgage providers.
Susan,
In my case, what is referred to as McMansions is the invasion of larger suburban appropriate houses into urban neighborhoods. What you build on a larger plot of land as large as it may be is not of great concern to me – I suspect that you have taste and that you acquired the builder your self, not the other way around. I applaud you for trying to prevent the subdividing of your property. I can relate because I grew up in a rural area in Michigan and on my last visit I was devastated by the destruction of huge areas of land by subdivision. And I’m talking HUGE.
As far as the size/price ratio to please banks, what if instead of putting money purely into size, the money was spent on quality workmanship in the home. I’ve seen a fair share of newer construction and most of it is of questionable quality obviously to maximize profit. Make the home smaller, neighborhood appropriate, do quality work and make the same amount of profit based on quality – I know….a dream. Americans see prestige in size, not quality. The house being built next to mine is smaller and high priced, yet I doubt that the workmanship will be of high quality. I’ll let you know when the house is closer to being complete.
Check out the article I referred to in my post earlier today (8/24/05).
Thanks for your input.
Brent