We recently had the opportunity to be involved in an interesting project. A homeowner approached Bruce Parker, a good friend of ours and the owner of Microhouse, with an interesting proposal. The homeowner had a beautiful little house that she had spent the past years restoring to its original early Seattle ‘craftsman’ glory. Unfortunately, this house had the misfortune to be small and located on a lot that was zoned L1, making it a prime target for redevelopment. The majority of the block had succumbed to development pressure and was now townhomes. The change in the neighborhood was causing the homeowner to look at moving….. It’s no fun being the only single family residence on a block of townhomes and condos. That said, she did not want to see the house be torn down for development which was almost guaranteed if she sold it.
The homeowner came up with an interesting solution…. The basic problem was that there was more potential profit in removing the house and building townhomes than there was in keeping the house. The market value was all in the land. Her solution was to develop the property in a way that the existing house was an integral part of the redevelopment plan. She proposed to do this by subdividing her property and building two new small cottage style homes. The resulting homes, the two new cottages and the existing house, would have enough value to make this a viable alternative.
The resulting layout reminded us of the historic cottage housing that exists around capitol hill and throughout Seattle.
We have heard that these types of developments were initially nurses housing but have not been able to confirm that. Josh Feit, in his great article for capitol hill blog notes that these developments are impractical in today’s day and age due to current land use regulations and economic pressures. While Josh’s comments that this would be difficult to develop today are true, if you factor in non traditional values such as preserving a building, then these might make financial sense.
We ran a simple development analysis for the project and determined that it would be a profitable endeavor. It would not have been as profitable as demolishing the house, but then again, how do you value saving a restored house? What we find really interesting about this model is that it is a private initiative. There was no arduous public process, just a committed homeowner who was willing to forego some (but not all) profit to save something she loved. We have been involved in our share of knock-downs (they were all pieces of ____ though) and will not hesitate to suggest demolition if that is the appropriate solution, but this project proved to us that creative solutions can strike a balance between profit and preservation.