Shooting a white elephant: Part 1, the elephant
Can Mephistopheles be thwarted?
“Can you believe the nerve of Steve Jobs?”
“What’d he do?”
“Moves into the neighborhood, immediately announces he intends to demolish a lovely 6,000 square foot house so he can build a rambling anachronistic 17,000 square foot house, three times as large.”
“No!”
“The old house was invisible in the landscape; the new one’s going to stand out.”
“No!”
“It’s right along the
“No!”
“Yes. And the neighbors are up in arms.”
“Actually, you’ve got everything backwards. That 17,000 square-foot white elephant? That’s what he wants to demolish, to build a new house a third the size, and the neighbors want to preserve it.”
“No!”
Can you see the bull’s-eye painted on it?
In some locales, a man’s home is his castle – except when he wants to tear it down.
For eight years, Steve Jobs has been trying to tear down the white elephant he no longer occupies. Or rather, he’s been trying to obtain legal permission to tear it down. Why he hasn’t yet secured that authority illuminates, even if in reverse, the challenges of changing property configuration or use in modern urban environments.
Does the owner of a property have a duty to save it? Even if it’s historic?
Am I historic? Or am I doomed?
By the time you finish this blog post, we should know the answer, as the Town of
Eight years of litigation … reviewed on fast-forward
Let’s tell the story using the nearest thing to a dispassionate treatment I’m likely to find on short notice – the Town Manager’s April 28, 2009 Report to Town Council (pdf), which sets the stage:
Steven Jobs (Jobs) has renewed his request for a demolition permit for the Jackling Estate (Residence) located at
– meaning that, like an endangered species, was entitled to building-permit sanctuary and the owner’s unilateral ability to do as he pleased was suspended pending judicial review.
– and the Town thus prepared an environmental impact report for the project pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
As I’ve previously posted, historic designation can make a building into a struldbrug, immortal even if decrepit … which the Jobs/ Jackling House has become.
Mr. Jackling died in 1956 but his house lives on
The Town Council’s December 2004 approval of a demolition permit for the Residence was challenged.
Looking forward to demolishing my house: Steve Jobs, 2005
Even though the town saw no problem with demolition, concerned citizens intervened … and won a round:
The trial court ruled in favor of the Petitioners –
Actually, two rounds:
– and the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court ruling in January 2007.
However, the preservationists’ win was not conclusive but procedural:
In doing so, the Court of Appeal reasoned that the Town Council’s findings rejecting certain restoration alternatives as economically infeasible were not supported by substantial evidence in the record since there was no comparative cost data of these alternatives compared to the cost of the new home.
Sidebar: when disputes are adjudicated judicially, what matters is not necessarily the truth but more typically the documentary evidence – which Jobs proceeded to supply:
In June 2008, Jobs renewed his application for the demolition permit, providing the cost information that the Court of Appeal found lacking in the prior application for the demolition permit.
The white elephant, as seen from space
Using the technology of an upstart Apple competitor and neighbor, let’s find the property from space
On the peninsula, up in the hills
The approximate 6 acre Property is located in the central portion of the Town, west of Interstate 280 and south of State Route 84. The Property is designated Residential-Environmentally Sensitive Area (“R/ESA”) by the Town’s General Plan. The environmentally sensitive designation is intended to identify areas that have significant development constraints. The designation applies here because of the Property’s proximity to the
In fact, the Property is very close to the Fault itself, a fact not irrelevant when considering whether its renovation is economically feasible.
The Property is improved with the Residence as well as associated accessory structures, including a cottage, garage/water tower, and aviary. The Residence is a 14 bedroom, 17,250 square foot structure –
Enormous, in other words.
Wings and ells and grounds and things …
Nice old Spanish Colonial Revival
– that was built in 1925 for Daniel Jackling, who was a key figure in the American copper mining industry. Mr. Jackling lived in the Residence from its construction until his death in 1956.
A visionary entrepreneur of another era: Daniel Jackling
Detour into historical irony: judging from how he made his money, Mr. Jackling himself was a man whom his house’s current defenders would probably not approve. From Wikipedia:
Daniel Cowan Jackling (August 14, 1869 – March 13, 1956), was an American mining and metallurgical engineer who pioneered the exploitation of low-grade porphyry copper ores at Bingham Canyon,
Jackling was educated in mining and metallurgy disciplines at the Missouri School of Mines in
Some years back, Nancy and I toured Bingham Canyon Mine; it’s a marvel of technology and scale, and it is in fact highly environmental (given that you want to excavate tons and tons of copper ore), but it’s hardly esthetic.
Daniel Jackling’s idea of “environmentally appropriate”: the mighty Bingham Canyon Mine
Though successful Jackling himself is not ‘historic’ within the meaning of our story; he was just rich, perhaps a Jobs of his day, and able to indulge his pride:
The Residence was designed by George Washington Smith, a leading architect in the Spanish Colonial Revival style in the
Like many of its analogs in other states,
The Town’s consultant determined that the Residence was eligible for listing on the CRHR [1] based on its association with Daniel Jackling and also [2] because it embodies the features and qualities of the Spanish Colonial Revival style. A peer review of the Town consultant’s findings concurred fully with the consultant’s conclusions.
Laws like the CEQA are designed to allow broad discretion to the administrative body tasked with looking at individual cases. Being written with loosely definable fuzzy-boundary words like ‘reasonable,’ ‘feasible,’ ’sensible,’ they are open invitations to fulmination, explication, and litigation.
I’m troubled by the lack of boundaries
The owner as renovator: Jobs’s history with the property
Mr. Jobs is no Stevie-come-lately – he’s been here for over twenty-five years:
Steve Jobs, 1980s: never not smug?
Jobs purchased the Property in the early 1980s and lived in the Residence for approximately ten years, before renting it out to others.
Presumably Mr. Jobs found the house, if not unlivable, at least unappealing, a conclusion evidently shared by others as well:
For over a decade [Since 1999 or before – Ed.], the Residence has been vacant.
Steve Jobs, 1999: “I don’t live there any more”
Mr. Jobs has by now laid out in detail what house he intends to build, even though not required to and even though approval at this stage will not be permission to develop. As described, it certainly sounds both more livable and more suitable:
The renewed application includes conceptual design plans that propose construction of a modern 6,000 square foot home in place of the existing Residence. The plans were prepared by the architectural firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and depict the new home being located in substantially the same location on the site as the existing Residence. The applicant also submitted additional, detailed cost estimates for construction of the new residence –
He’s even gone a step further, calculating out the cost of numerous things he really doesn’t want to do:
– and, for comparative purposes, cost estimates for an extensive renovation of the Residence to meet modern standards.
According to these cost estimates, prepared by Baker pre-Construction Company [Same company for both scenarios, to eliminate bias – Ed.], the cost of the new residence is estimated to be approximately $8.2 million while the cost of renovating the existing Residence to modern standards is estimated to be approximately $13.3 million.
Having thus proffered evidence that renovation would be $5.1 million more expensive than demolishing and building new:
Free iPhone if you let me tear down my house: Steve Jobs, 2008
In June 2008, Jobs renewed his application for the demolition permit.
Try, try again
Now what’s before the Town, and for that matter, why hasn’t the town approved it already?
[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]
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