12 3 / 2009
And, this is how it happens.
Yesterday I contacted the Planning Department’s ”Preservation Technical Specialists” for the Northeast Quadrant about the building at 1268 Lombard. Despite the passage of Prop J last fall and the municipal web destination’s fancy preservation page, the preservation staff routed me to Zoning Administrator Badiner (who I met several times when I worked at the Board of Supervisors; I would of course never expect him to recognize a forgettable intern, but I remember him as charismatic, always gracious, and since I was obsessed with land use planning, riveting.) And he had some very well-chosen words to explain the situation, below:
Dear M:
While this is within the jurisdiction of the Department of Building Inspection, I will attempt to answer your questions below:
My understanding is that both public and private structural engineers have examined the building, and have declared it unsafe. Chief Building Inspector Sweeney and Building Inspection Commissioner Debra Walker have also inspected the building, along with a Deputy City Attorney. The owners have applied for a demolition permit, and the Department of Building Inspection is walking the permit through the process. The Department of Building Inspection has determined that this is an Imminent Safety Hazard and the only way to correct the hazard is through demolition. I am told the demolition permit will by early tomorrow This emergency demolition permit supersedes historic preservation and housing preservation procedures.
Without commenting on whether this is willful neglect, public safety would trump any concerns regarding how the building became unsafe. It is possible that such neglect could be pursued through legal channels, but I am not sure of this.
I would suggest you contact the Department of Building Inspection for further information.
Thank you,
Lawrence B. Badiner Zoning Administrator San Francisco Planning Department 1650 Mission Street, Suite 400 San Francisco, CA 94103
I learned this morning that the demolition permits were approved and implemented after several department higher-ups from both Planning and DBI visited the site. The building will be destroyed in the near future. So, this is a perfect illustration of a specific failure of our regulatory environment to conserve a part of the building stock our public policy deems important to retain.
I don’t have any personal stake in this particular building; I live halfway across town. The reason I am so concerned with 1268 Lombard is that it is an archetype for an unfortunate phenomenon that happens consistently all over San Francisco and really, all over the country. Developers don’t want to be bothered to utilize the structure already occupying a lot, usually because it is too small to maximize profit from tight urban space limits, or they perceive historically sensitive renovations to be prohibitively expensive and/or frivolous socialism. In urban areas with tight land use controls and restrictions on alteration of the building stock, they just neglect it to the point of condemnation, when restoration of any kind is no longer an option.
This is precisely the part of the process that needs fixing. Increasingly, the perception that restoring an old building is too expensive is exactly that: a perception. There are several tax incentives available in most jurisdictions, and the field of historic building materials suppliers is explosively robust and competitive. Also, it is well known (now, as we climb our way out of the legacy of the benighted “urban renewal” era) in most markets that old buildings are better-constructed, preferred aesthetically by a majority of citizens (and buyers), and good for property values. Despite fears that historic districts will decrease property values by decreasing the freedom to remodel, they have been proven to be very good for an area’s valuation (see: Dogpatch, Liberty Hill.) Real estate professionals mostly leverage this to their advantage, by touting a building’s “old world charm” as justification for premium pricing. But like any good capitalists, they don’t like to be constrained by the public sector when it doesn’t suit them, so they employ techniques like this to skirt regulation.
Theoretical justification for a public policy that supports the preservation of historic building stock is endlessly debatable, but the fact is WE HAVE IT. We have implemented policy and entitlement processes to protect resources we, societally, have deemed important to the public good. The solution would seem simple: if you don’t think an old building is worth a measure of care and conservation, and you live in an area with restrictive public policy, don’t buy one. There is plenty of half-empty new construction here to meet your needs. But of course, in the real world it is always more complex. Maybe a 2-bedroom craftsman bungalow in a less-than-ideal neighborhood is all you can afford, but you need another bedroom to accomodate your growing family? Totally understandable. And restricting someone from adding on to their historic house isn’t the kind of preservation policy we need to be focusing on; give them a copy of the guidelines, approve their contractor and get on with it.
That isn’t the scenario presenting itself here, and people ideologically opposed to preservation policy will throw the prior example in your face as justification. Here we have a small lot in one of the most intensely sought-after neighborhoods in the entire country, zoned RH-3 and ripe for a big three-unit building of luxury condos built out to the lot line, commanding probably more than a million dollars each when finished. This isn’t a “growing family” of “hard-working Americans” or any of the other politically darling demographics that money people love to use to equate the public sector with communism. This is a very savvy, totally mobbed up group of investors who obviously do not give a fuck about the building, the neighborhood, the heritage, the collective psychology of aesthetics, or pretty butterflies.
They (understandably) care that the building is too small to maximize profit from the lot size, and that if they restored the original building it would be subject to rent control. Also, I do believe that they acquired the building in fairly decrepit condition. So the fault does not entirely lie with the current owners. The building was family-owned for a long time, by the (similarly mobbed up) Molinari family, who took out a demolition permit back in 2000, at which time they were told by the Planning Department that it would require an Environmental Impact Report. That is basically what it sounds like: it is the document wherein you pay experts to tell you that tearing down a building is really fucking bad for the environment. Sometimes this changes the Planning Department’s mind about whether or not you can tear it down, and obviously, that is annoying if you are the person seeking to do so.
But, here is the reason our public policy is a little more restrictive: walk to the corner of Fulton and Steiner. Make mental note. Then, walk to the corner of Eddy and Buchanan. Make mental note. On a nice sunny day, pay a visit to 999 Green Street, 1000-50 North Point, or 1251 Turk. Wasn’t mid-century “urban renewal” just the best?
So, back to those demolition permits. When the old owners filed for them, they were told they needed an EIR, apparently just decided “fuck it” and let the building fall further into disrepair. This was their bad, not necessarily the current owners’ bad. The previous owners had a responsibility to maintain the property in operable condition, and they didn’t. (The current owners recently acquired the building in shitty condition, although it’s unclear who left the doors and windows open to allow the elements in.) Why the old owners weren’t fined or otherwise compelled by the city to maintain is a question; in any municipality, property owners have a responsibility to maintain their property to a basic standard. That isn’t some SanFranCommie thing. In any city from Wilmington, DE to Seattle, it is certainly an acceptable thing for the city to come around and slap a “clean your shit up” notice on places in serious disrepair. Sure, maybe in West Philly or Baltimore they can’t quite keep up with the level of degradation, but this is RUSSIAN HILL. Why hasn’t DBI been involved before now??
I fervently hope this is just bureaucratic oversight. On a totally unrelated note, let’s get back to the current owners, the people who are facilitating a demolition within a matter of weeks that’s been sitting fallow for NINE YEARS. The owning entities are registered to principals at Vanguard Realty’s 2501 Mission address. Vanguard’s CEO is James Nunemacher, who my peer group may recall is the guy who shut down the party at the lawfully-permitted Mission Street Food a couple months back. He also has personal association with Jean Paul Samaha, a Vanguard realtor who is also the listed owner of several San Francisco properties. I used to know Jean Paul Samaha as our office liaison at the Board of Supervisors from (surprise!) the Planning Department! He was the very nice, reserved, good looking fellow who would come down and gently explain to us why calling your supervisor’s office when you have an issue with a permit project in your neighborhood is essentially pointless. But he has no connection to this project whatsoever. And I’m sure Vanguard Realty has no residual influence within the Planning Department at all. But I digress. What was I saying?
So, at 1268 Lombard, just as at 450 Frederick in 2004, or countless other buildings all over the country (so many that Richard Moe, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, addressed it as a nationwide crisis in 2006), a formerly viable, valuable two-family house dating from the CIVIL WAR that despite natural exterior alteration over time clearly represented the vernacular of its neighborhood (at one time, such a part of the Russian Hill zeitgeist that Armistead Maupin housed his prototype San Franciscans in such a cottage) will be destroyed this week because it wasn’t the Planning Department’s “jurisdiction.” And apparently, only became DBI’s “jurisdiction” very recently, when it ostensibly should have become theirs when the original permit was filed in 2000? Nobody has even begun to address the violation of the municipal code that is purposefully destroying rental housing stock, and because of the myriad other factors at work here, that aspect of it will probably just die in obscurity.
I am actually a big proponent of increasing density limits in urban areas, and I totally agree with the argument that adding more units of housing per lot is an important goal. I think that at one time, this building could have been restored in a way that was both sensitive to its original architectural and locational context, and accomodating to additional units. The critical failing in the regulatory environment is that we are not communicating that achieving both goals is not mutually exclusive, and restoration does not have to be an albatross around the neck of the owner. It’s not some socialist imposition, it’s a process that furthers both the public and private good; it is good for your property values, good for the environment, and good for the collective identity of place. But it has to be communicated early on, it has to be incentivized, and the Planning Department needs to work actively WITH project sponsors, not against them. It’s a sad casualty of neglect and communication breakdown.
Take a walk by 450 Frederick and get friendly with the gauche, cheaply constructed triplex that the private sector deems a more worthy use of space, not because it is good for the stakeholders and the long-term health of the place where you live, but because it squeezes the maximum amount of dollars out of one narrow city lot.
