Allan Appel Photo
Neighborhood organizers Victoria Vebell and Olivia Marston.
An epidemic of cheap vinyl siding. A loss of historic houses. Too-tall boxy buildings that threaten their “funky” and diverse walking neighborhood.
Some property owners in the Dwight neighborhood say they’ve seen enough of those perils. So they’ve banded together.
The neighbors have formed a group called Friends of the Dwight Street Historic District to put some muscle behind efforts for neighborhood preservation.
The first presentation of the new group and its proposals will come Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Dwight Central Management Team meeting at Amistad Academy.
Vinyl siding on the Dwight Cooperatives on Edgewood.
Founders include local realtor and preservationist Olivia Marston, Edgewood Avenue homeowner Victoria Vebell, and Susan Bradford, co-owner of 70 Howe St. That building is cheek by jowl with a planned 136-unit, 53,000 square foot, six-story-high proposed project for the corner of Chapel and Howe, which recently received its zoning variance approvals. It got those approvals despite a threatened lawsuit by Susan Bradford and potentially other neighbors.
The new group has already identified one of its first battles: to fight new zoning language city officials are proposing that could make it easier for Salvatore-type developments to occur in the future.
Site of the proposed Salvatore development.
On an icy cold morning Marston and Vebell took the Independent on a tour of the neighborhood federal historic district, which stretches roughly from Park to Sherman and Elm to North Frontage, to show what they’re trying to preserve.
Marston conceded that a federal historic district (as opposed to local historic district like Wooster Square or City Point) offers preservationists few legal protections, the main one being if the developer is under contract with the federal government.
So the group wants to rely on powers of persuasion, Marston said.
Click here, here, and here to read about the Salvatore plan, the alleged parking hassles that greater density will cause, Salvatore’s support from parts of the community, and opposition by other residents.
Downtown Density vs. Dwight’s Demeanor
The Friends’ first battle comes triggered by city zoners granting Salvatore’s variances. The Friends plan to protest new language city officials plan to propose later this month at the City Plan Commission meeting to remove current requirements from a BD‑1 zone, requirements the group considers protections for the neighborhood’s character.
Those protections include requirements for minimum lot coverage, open space, and front yards.
The original BD‑1 or general business/residential zone was created in 1988 in connection with the Ninth Square to ease the conversion of historic downtown properties. A spate of text amendments was approved both by City Plan commissioners and aldermen in June 2011.
The Friends are concerned the new batch of amendments about to go before City Plan. Click here to read the text of the amendments.
City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg argued the language changes are in keeping with the city’s comprehensive plan encouraging high-density, mixed use development downtown.
In a Dec. 7 letter to the Board of Alderman, Gilvarg wrote that through the proposed new language she aims “to clarify bulk, yard, and other requirements for residential construction, to provide open and common space space requirements for residential and mixed use buildings … and to permit compact car parking space, and to clarify that mixed-used buildings are permitted use in general business/residential BD‑1 zone.” (Click here to read the letter.)
In view of the Friends, this means that future developers in a BD‑1 zone, which covers portions of the Dwight Street Historic District would not even need to seek variances and exceptions, as Salvatore has had to. They would be able to build “as of right.”
First Stop: Across From Rudy’s
Vebell and her cousin were having lunch at Rudy’s recently when her cousin pointed to two historic buildings, an apartment house and business all in a line at the southeast corner of Chapel and Howe. “How funky, cool, and interesting,” her cousin said.
Next stop: the corner of Garden Street and Edgewood, where Community Builders has owned and operated several houses since 1995 as past of the sprawling federally-subsidized Kensingston Square complex.
In the beginning, the national company maintained the buildings with historical integrity, choosing appropriate paint and colors, for example, Marston said.
Privately owned house on left, Kengsington Square house with vinyl on the right, on Garden St.
“They kept the integrity for the first ten years but in the last five or ten, they didn’t paint, they covered up with vinyl siding.”
“And they did a shoddy job because it was just economically [not historically] driven,” Vebell added. (City officials agree, and have been pressuring the landlord to do better.)
“This is not just [about] the corner of Chapel and Howe,” said Bradford.
She said the group formed “because we have great pride of ownership and that’s based on their [our buildings’] historical value as well as their real estate. The Salvatore project brought us together.”
