Steve Ashford was happy to see public safety trump history, but
he still has a way to go before demolition.
Steve Ashford was happy to see public safety trump history, but he still has a way to go before demolition.
The local builder has spent the last four months trying to demolish and rebuild an old narrow building downtown at 7511 Monterey St. because the city council passed an ordinance more than a year ago requiring the repair of old buildings prone to crumbling in an earthquake.
Despite financial incentives such as fee waivers, though, most of the city’s “unreinforced masonry buildings” remain in disrepair. Only seven of the city’s 37 known URM buildings have been fixed – either by repairs or demolition and reconstruction – and about 10 of the remaining 30 buildings are in the city’s queue with their owners securing the necessary permits, according to Development Center Manager Kristi Abrams.
While city officials point mainly to ill-informed and uncooperative property owners for the low completion rate, Ashford said the city’s under-staffed planning department, double standards and unrealistic demands from historical heavy-weights have slowed his project. He recently convinced the Planning Commission that he should not have to hire an archaeologist for about $20,000 to be on site during the building’s week-long demolition. The Historical Heritage Committee recommended that Ashford do this with a 3-0-2 vote at its Dec. 19 meeting.
“We’re being forced to rebuild these buildings, and any expense at all is more than we want to incur,” Ashford said. “(The HHC) is not being consistent. The city council needs to step in and give them some direction. We don’t need to have people saying, ‘You need to paint your house this color and build it this way.'”
This is just one of many roadblocks Ashford has experienced.
He cannot even begin demolition until the neighbor at 7515 Monterey St. also gets his demolition permit because the two buildings share a common wall. The next property north, 7517 Monterey St., also shares a common wall with the sandwiched, permit-less building, so all three have to work together. The third building’s owner, however, did not have to fight an archaeologist requirement before getting his demolition permit, Ashford said. Hence the double standard.
“I don’t have a lot of money to go out there and hire and archaeologist when the city doesn’t want it anyway,” Ashford said, referring to a conversation he had with Community Services Director Susan Andrade-Wax, during which she told him that the city is not even interested in storing and collecting what any broken dishes or glass shards an archaeologist would likely find. “The city has told us how it is going to expedite these projects, so they should be helping us get through this and not making it harder and harder,” Ashford said.
But Mayor Al Pinheiro said the planning commission’s decision in favor of Ashford shows that the process is working fairly.
“For 25 years these buildings have been there and should’ve been repaired but they have not,” Pinheiro said. “We need to make it viable for these folks to repair buildings. At times, there are things that come before the planning commission where they feel differently (than the HHC), and this was one of them.”
Many different rules determine whether a URM building needs to go through the HHC or pass stricter requirements, but because most downtown buildings lie within the city’s historic district, URMs within the area require HHC and planning commission review, according to City Planner Greg Polubinsky. Abrams said it can take anywhere from a few months to a year for a property owner to get through city paperwork depending on their neighbors and that particular property’s history.
Gilroy also has three “historic building sites” within the protected district, each of which requires an environmental impact report and council approval thanks to state regulations. None of the three URMs are in the city’s repair queue yet, according to Abrams. For every month URM owners fail to start the repair or demolition process, they lose financial incentives. The city will impose a $10,000 per month fine on owners who do nothing by January 2010.
Such hefty financial incentives convey the city’s desire to fix the problem fast, but Councilman Dion Bracco – who sits on the HHC as a council representative and who voted for the archaeologist requirement Dec. 19 – recently said that fast-tracking repairs proves cumbersome when historical passions intervene.
“I tried to stress (to the HHC Dec. 19) that if you put too many barriers, people are not going to develop the downtown. We’re walking a tightrope trying to keep everybody happy,” Bracco said, adding that when the vacuum store at 7463 Monterey St. fixed its old URM structure, artifact-hunters came onto the property with metal detectors and took weathered pottery and cracked dish ware. The HHC wanted an archaeologist to prevent such scavenging this time around, he said.
“This is ridiculous – some of this stuff,” Ashford said. Whenever his neighbor gets his “demo” permit, Ashford said he will spend tens of thousands of dollars to demolish and reconstruct the building to look exactly as it does now (except for the door) and also upgrade its sprinkler system to conform with modern building codes. This means they all deserve more of a break, said Ashford, who will also have a photographer from the city museum on hand during the demolition to document anything significant.
Members of the Historic Heritage Committee could not be reached for comment Monday, and Gilroy Historical Society member Connie Rogers did not return calls for comment. At the Planning Commission meeting Dec. 19, City Planning Manager Bill Faus said the HHC will probably debate the issue further after the commission’s decision. The HHC’s next meeting is Wednesday afternoon, during which the committee will discuss design guidelines for historic downtown buildings and URMs, according to the agenda.
View more photos of unreinforced masonry buildings in our
