Category: Historic

Shooting a white elephant: Part 3, the human shields

13 May, 2009 (09:02) | California, Configuration, Historic, Homeownership, Local issues, Steve Jobs, Zoning and land use | No comments

Continued from yesterday’s Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]
 
For two posts now we’ve been following, via the Town Manager’s April 28, 2009 Report to Town Council (pdf) in Woodside, California, the eight-year saga of patient homeowner Steve Jobs, who is merely seeking to do what 99.9% of American would think an inalienable right, namely [...]

Shooting a white elephant: Part 2, the blunderbuss

12 May, 2009 (10:39) | California, Configuration, Historic, Homeownership, Local issues, Steve Jobs, Zoning and land use | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
In yesterday’s post, via the Town Manager’s April 28, 2009 Report to Town Council (pdf) in Woodside, California, we met patient homeowner Steve Jobs, who has for eight years been seeking to demolish a property he owns and plainly regards as a white elephant, a rambling 17,000-square foot Spanish Colonial Revival [...]

Shooting a white elephant: Part 1, the elephant

11 May, 2009 (10:43) | California, Configuration, Historic, Homeownership, Local issues, Steve Jobs, Zoning and land use | No comments

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 [...]

Bitten in the NIMBY ass

2 April, 2009 (10:12) | Historic, Humor, Local issues, NIMBY, Washington, Zoning and land use | No comments

Every now and then, the little guys win one, and when they do, as in this day-in-the-life farce reported in a recent Washington Post article, the resulting splutters reveal some folks’ unbalanced view of rules – namely that they’re things I write and you obey. 
 
To many in Old Town Alexandria, the sex shop that [...]

Loophole or gotcha? Part 2: I like my rights

14 January, 2009 (08:39) | Cities, Historic, Local issues, Regulation, Zoning and land use | No comments

[Continued from yesterday’s part 1.] 
 
“But I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. “
– Jake Gittes, Chinatown
 

 
Yesterday’s post opened up the challenge of preserving old buildings that contribute to a city’s diversity, character, and with any luck economic competitiveness while at the same time not letting the taste [...]