Jo Summar said that if she was writing this story, the title would be "What's Wrong With This Picture?" Standing in front of her 120-odd-year-old home on Arch Street, you can see her point. Summar bought her house in 2002, and spent three years bringing it back. Inside and out — other than an unfinished privacy fence that was finally approved by the Capitol Zoning District Commission in late October after a months-long process — the house looks like something out of Architectural Digest.
It's hard to disagree that the CZDC has bigger dish to fry than Summar's fence project. Next door to her house is a Victorian home that has peeled in places to gray wood. Just down the street, the home owned by the man who chairs the CZDC's design review committee has crumbling eaves and a shipwreck of old wooden scaffolding along one side.?
The CZDC says they're just trying to keep the historic fabric of the neighborhood intact. Summar, however, says the hassles involved in getting her fence approved are symptomatic of the CZDC's obsession with permits and red tape, which is allowing previously-restored houses to crumble while keeping new, preservation-minded residents out.?
The CZDC was established in 1975 by the state legislature, and was aimed at turning around neglect of historic homes near the Arkansas Governor's Mansion and the Arkansas State Capitol. The Capitol Zone is a large triangle, bordered by the railroad tracks behind Union Station in the north, Cross Street in the East and I-630 in the south. The Mansion Zone is bordered by Roosevelt Road in the south, 13th Street in the North, State Street in the west, and Cumberland Street in the east. The nine-member commission and its advisory committees oversee all design, zoning, new construction and renovation projects in the area. Residents in the area must obtain a permit before they can petition for a building permit from the city. Projects that fall within current rules can be approved at a staff level. Any project that falls outside those rules must be granted a variance by the commission.
Summar, a retired Army/VA nurse, knew her overgrown wire fence in the back yard had needed replacing for awhile, but she sped up the project when her golden retriever started escaping in the spring. In mid-May, Summar called the commission, inquiring about the permits needed to build a six-foot privacy fence with two feet of lattice at the top. At the time, she was told that because the proposed fence exceeded the six-foot maximum height allowance, they couldn't recommend the project for approval, and she would need a variance from the commission. That would take awhile. She was told that she wouldn't be able to get a hearing for about six weeks. Then, in June, her dog escaped again and was almost carted off to the pound. Soon after, Summar's son began building the fence she'd wanted, with Summar believing she could get approval for it after the fact.
"Feeling a sense of urgency to protect my two dogs, and knowing that there had been fences approved after the fact just like the one I wanted, he proceeded," she said. "The Capitol Zoning staff had previously recommended approval for two people [with similar fences] before me. One of those previous two was after the fact."
By September, the fence was mostly finished, and her son began replacing the original six-foot privacy fence on the street side of the yard. On Sept. 21, Summar received a letter from the CZDC informing her that the lattice on top of the fence constituted a violation. In response, Summar got the permitting process started. Soon after, she was told that she had to give letters of notice to every neighbor within 200 feet. Later, she was told she needed to submit a survey of the property, even though she said there was already one in her file from previous application. Finally, she was told that she would have to present her project to the design review committee. The soonest they could see her was November. If her project was approved at that level, the soonest the full commission could see her was December. That's when she called the Arkansas Times.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.
No comments:
Post a Comment