Open Sesame!

November 3, 2013 5:48 PM

You live in Haight Ashbury. You'd love to install a garage in your historic home but there are architectural restrictions against doing so. Well, with the right group of guys, there are ways around it.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (45 comments total)

On Full House, they just parked in the kitchen.
posted by box at 6:00 PM on November 3, 2013

That's very cool, but I definitely wonder how often they're going to be on the phone with towing companies to remove people parking there despite the sign. In Brooklyn a simple "no parking" sign will be ignored without the additional visual of a driveway or other obvious parking spot.
posted by nevercalm at 6:01 PM on November 3, 2013 [6 favorites]

Neat engineering.

Of course, in order to preserve their access, they've had to deny anyone else the right to park in front of the house. So they spent all that money to turn one street parking spot into one garage parking spot.

Of course, this way they can guarantee that no one else gets the spot (because of the right-of-way) privatizing the space in front of their home on a public thoroughfare. Effectively, they've increased the value of their property at the expense of the commons.

But neat engineering.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:01 PM on November 3, 2013 [18 favorites]

This is surreal. The city lets the front of a historic house be turned into a garage door (with a glowing "No Parking" sign), and people in the comments complain that building regulations are too tight?

One of the goals of the standards is to keep not only the historical appearance, but to keep the ‘historic fabric’ – the original wood and glass building materials – intact wherever possible.

They do realize that this alteration fails to conserve he "historic fabric" of the building?

The front yard, which had a possibly original wrought iron fence, also had to be redesigned to incorporate a driveway and a percentage of planting areas in accordance with the zoning code.

'Possibly original'? These people are ripping out features and have no idea what is original and what is not? Good word this is vandalism, not something to be proud of.
posted by Thing at 6:01 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Needs more marketing.
posted by benzenedream at 6:02 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

So they spent all that money to turn one street parking spot into one garage parking spot.

TFA says there are four spots under there, somehow.
posted by nevercalm at 6:03 PM on November 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

As a mechanical engineer and former car nut this...sets my teeth on edge. Letter of the law/spirit of the law, indeed.
posted by notsnot at 6:07 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Probably cost more than building a whole new house almost anywhere in America.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:09 PM on November 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

Come on, they came up with a way to get four spots or four cars off the street in exchange for one spot. This is a win-win. It does, for the most part keep the interior intact. Let the owner use his property.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 6:10 PM on November 3, 2013 [7 favorites]

TFA says there are four spots under there, somehow.

Fair. I withdraw my complaint.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:13 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

They do realize that this alteration fails to conserve he "historic fabric" of the building?

This is one of those times where minutae bite you on the ass. The modification does indeed preserve the "historic fabric" of the facade. That's the original wood and glass that has been carefully separated so that it can swing in to make a door now. When the door is closed it's totally original. Tourists walking by would have no clue, other than the no parking signs, that it's anything other than another original bay window.

That said, as much as I love San Francisco what it most likely cost to do this makes my teeth vibrate in a most unpleasant way.
posted by localroger at 6:18 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Did you watch the video in the second post which shows the inside? This really is relegating the meaning of 'historical fabric' to "I stuck the old bits of wood onto the new build". I think it's a sham.

Cities can write whatever codes they want for conserving or not conserving old buildings, but if they're going to do so, they should at least do it right.
posted by Thing at 6:41 PM on November 3, 2013

They do realize that this alteration fails to conserve he "historic fabric" of the building?

Like much of American society, it's all about the facade.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:45 PM on November 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

I wonder if all four cars would have to park nose-to-tail. If so, what a pain in the ass.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:45 PM on November 3, 2013

Having seen some of the similar arguments that go on about strutures in the French Quarter of New Orleans, I can guarantee you that it's all about how it looks from the sidewalk.
posted by localroger at 6:48 PM on November 3, 2013

To add: They had to alter the building a lot for seismic stabilization anyway. Those changes made it possible to open up the ground floor as a garage instead of a series of rooms or a space unusably punctuated by pillars. Part of their argument here is that if they are completely replacing the building's foundation and adding a bunch of steel framing, then the garage door thing is pretty much a coda to that.
posted by localroger at 6:50 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Like much of American society, it's all about the facade.

Well, you joke, but that's really all that matters because the historic preservation is only going to preserve a private building to the extent that the public can experience it, which basically translates to "what you can see from the street". The interior of a private house is generally not protected by historic regulations because the public isn't ever going to see it anyway.

Let the owner use his property.

The big trade-off for having a historically designated structure is that you get a HUGE property tax reduction. Blow the historicity or public access to it, you lose the tax reduction.
posted by LionIndex at 6:58 PM on November 3, 2013

Clever engineering and all but I'm not sure when parking space for cars becomes more valuable than living space for people.
posted by islander at 7:21 PM on November 3, 2013

I used to live around the corner from that place, and I kinda understand why they did this. Finding parking within a few blocks of your house can be pretty tough, and Oak Street is busy enough that stopping your car in traffic to quickly unload groceries or whatnot at your house would make problems.
posted by needs more cowbell at 7:26 PM on November 3, 2013

That's very cool, but I definitely wonder how often they're going to be on the phone with towing companies to remove people parking there despite the sign.

In my personal experience of living in a place with almost no street parking and where cars regularly park illegally, you have the tow company on speed dial and they will have that car up on the truck before you hang up the phone. Cha. Ching.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:34 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

What's to prevent everybody in the Haight from turning their house into a Batman-style parking garage? There are good arguments for limited parking, like limited personal cars in the city.
posted by Camofrog at 7:42 PM on November 3, 2013

It's ludicrous to try to preserve every single historic house. I get where people are coming from, but San Francisco in particular is a place begging for more housing. The backlash against this guy putting in a garage—despite the ingenuity of the build that makes it look identical—is a perfect example of bizarre preservationism. There are industrial buildings in my city that are less than sixty years old that have been declared "historic." There are large numbers of dingbat-style buildings in San Francisco that are going to fold like a house of cards in the next large earthquake that are considered "historic."
posted by sonic meat machine at 7:53 PM on November 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

What's to prevent everybody in the Haight from turning their house into a Batman-style parking garage?

Well, really, what's the problem with everybody in the Haight turning their house into a Batman-style parking garage? What will prevent it is that most people spending that much money will want that first floor space for uses other than storing cars.

I don't even get what the fuss is about - from either the "too many regulations" side or the "they didn't really preserve it" side. They wanted to do something with the property, took their proposed solution for the problem to the planning department, THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT APPROVED IT, and then they did it. This is exactly how things are supposed to work. If I were a billionaire, I'd buy up whole blocks and build one giant subterranean parking garage under all the houses with just a couple things like these as an entrance and exit, and resell the houses as condos and collect hella HOA fees.
posted by LionIndex at 8:37 PM on November 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

Well, really, what's the problem with everybody in the Haight turning their house into a Batman-style parking garage?

Nothing I suppose, in a culture that is okay with people breaking the spirit of the law as long as they have enough money to construct gee-whiz Batcaves. Again, maybe it's a feature, not a bug, that it's hard to have a car in the city.
posted by Camofrog at 10:04 PM on November 3, 2013

Here's an interesting article from SPUR pointing out some of the more subtle deleterious effects of curb cuts on San Francisco's sidewalk space (as contrasted with rowhouse development without garages or curb cuts).
posted by whir at 10:09 PM on November 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

Here's an interesting article from SPUR...

The first words in the article are San Francisco is famously among the world’s most beautiful cities, at which point I was thinking "Why do people think this?! San Francisco is ugly.", but then I read on; he first explains why people think that, then goes into detail as to why it's ugly. I'm not alone! :)
posted by anonymisc at 10:37 PM on November 3, 2013

Nothing I suppose, in a culture that is okay with people breaking the spirit of the law

The thing is, I don't think they're really breaking the spirit of the law as it's actually intended. It's definitely better that they do something like this instead of removing the bay window to put in a garage door, which was allowed and apparently done fairly frequently previously. The law intends to preserve the historic appearance of the building from the point of the public view, not the use or the interior. If you want to preserve those, you may as well seal your city in amber and watch it die - no more old factories turned into offices or live/work lofts.
posted by LionIndex at 11:03 PM on November 3, 2013

Here's a thought: what was that space used for before? What could that space have been used for, going forward?

The effort--and money--that it took to build that parking area could have been used to build a very, very nice apartment instead, in the same space. That apartment could easily have been rented for $2000 a month. Far more than even four parking spaces are worth.

For all the noise about how San Francisco is anti-car, the truth is that the city strongly supports--requires, even--accommodating parking. For all the noise about how San Francisco supports affordable housing, the truth is that the city will block any modification of existing buildings that adds apartments. Space for additional autos--ok, no problem. Space for additional people--no way.
posted by alexei at 1:27 AM on November 4, 2013

The big trade-off for having a historically designated structure is that you get a HUGE property tax reduction. Blow the historicity or public access to it, you lose the tax reduction.

This may be locally true but certainly is not true in most jurisdictions.

It's ludicrous to try to preserve every single historic house.

*sigh* As usual people strongly misinterpret the goals and process of historic preservation and rehab. Look, we know that not every last one will survive, and in fact many cities lose houses with or without historic designations every single year, sometimes by the boatload. There are landmarks ordinances and facade protections in some specific places that make sure that highly-valued buildings are not unthinkingly lost, but even where there are ordinances the landowner has the majority of the power.

As to 90% of historically designated properties which are not under shelter of any landmark protection laws, all that exists is some tax incentives to do rehab the right way, entirely voluntary, and then only under certain circumstances.

They do realize that this alteration fails to conserve he "historic fabric" of the building?

The historic preservation movement for decades now has taken a majority position in favor of rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. This means that we know that, say, there isn't any reason to have a coke* plant anymore but if you want to make it into lofts that's OK. Buildings that do not have a purpose, quite simply, lose their justification for remaining, and very few need to be museums of architecture. The principle that you retain the historic fabric is primarily a sort of rule of necessity -- if you must, say, add or remove an historic element, do so, but try to do it in an aesthetically undamaging way, and otherwise keep what you can as well as you can and as long as you can. The next owner may well appreciate the fact that he still has the original Italianate front door in the basement, for example.
* The type you burn.

This troubles me very little on the historic preservation column. I do have quibbles with the loss of parking, which impacts all the other properties on the block, and simply increases the pressure that they themselves will take the libertarian position and maximize their own value at the expense of others. It's not sustainable across every property in a city, and studies have shown that there are serious problems with code that actually requires minimal levels of off-street parking, because that means curb cuts, it means sometimes loss of other buildings to provide a lot or access, and ultimately it contributes to the continuation of automobile culture in a heavily urban area where that is, bluntly, a net negative for society.
posted by dhartung at 2:08 AM on November 4, 2013

This may be locally true but certainly is not true in most jurisdictions.

It is generally true in California, under the Mills Act. Administration of the Mills Act is performed by local jurisdictions, so there will be variances, but the property tax trade-off is the general idea. I think the only catch is that a structure needs to be designated historical by some governing body (or in a historic district) - you can't just have an old house and claim property tax abatement.

I do have quibbles with the loss of parking, which impacts all the other properties on the block, and simply increases the pressure that they themselves will take the libertarian position and maximize their own value at the expense of others. It's not sustainable across every property in a city, and studies have shown that there are serious problems with code that actually requires minimal levels of off-street parking,

Generally I agree, especially in a city like SF that should be like New York and no one should feel the need to own a car. But, I can see garage as something other than a net negative, even if a bunch of other owners pull it off (and, from the article, other owners have been doing this kind of thing for years, just with a regular garage door replacing the bay window - on that front, this is an obvious improvement). Everyone buying a property in this area is probably going to be a household of some means, and could likely have two cars. If you can get a tandem parking garage in every lot, you're then effectively removing more than one car from the street already. If you have regulations that keep curb cuts to 16' or narrower in width, you may actually free up street parking (normally a parallel parking spot would be 21' long) if the driveways are far enough apart. That's a lot of variables though.
posted by LionIndex at 7:26 AM on November 4, 2013

All other things aside, I have to wonder how weather proof those changes are. Looks like a recipe for a wet garage.

Granted, it's cullyfornia, where all those HG TV shows showroom these beautiful outdoor rooms with nice furniture and electronics that make me wonder the same "what about when it rains ??" questions.
posted by k5.user at 8:48 AM on November 4, 2013

It's ludicrous to try to preserve every single historic house. I get where people are coming from, but San Francisco in particular is a place begging for more housing.

So it's a great idea to turn what could have been a spacious ground floor apartment into parking?

It seems like a sick result of people with lots of money and strict planning requirements to end up with a space that looks like housing in a city that desperately needs it, but in reality is just parking. We can preserve the look of a place as a city for people, but the reality is that so much of it is for cars.
posted by ssg at 9:36 AM on November 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

So it's a great idea to turn what could have been a spacious ground floor apartment into parking?

Apparently it's more valuable as parking than it is as a ground floor apartment, that might represent a market gone insane, but it seems to be the truth of the matter. I'd agree that addressing that through planning and zoning designed to increase available housing and discourage car ownership is a worthy goal, but it's not the goal of historic preservation. Those goals are pretty well met by what happened here.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:46 AM on November 4, 2013

Selling street parking is exactly what San Francisco needs to do.

The current system has the worst of both worlds: far too little parking to be an adequate supply, leading to huge amounts of time wasted, gas burnt, and traffic, but too much street parking outside of the financial district and SOMA to incentive the construction of parking garages.

The city could probably raise the better part of a billion dollars (plenty of blocks where people would bid $500k+ for the parking spot) and garages would be built to replace much of the lost parking capacity, with the balance of drivers giving up their cars in favor of mass transit and smartphone driven car service options.
posted by MattD at 9:52 AM on November 4, 2013

and in fact many cities lose houses with or without historic designations every single year, sometimes by the boatload.

Like the time that houseboat sank!
posted by dirigibleman at 9:53 AM on November 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'd argue that the goal of historic preservation should be far more than just what things look like. Is it not a worthwhile type of historic preservation to try to maintain cities as liveable, walkable places? To preserve cities as places for people of all income levels?

Clearly, that isn't the goal of historic preservation as it is practiced. The market demands more parking and more parking will be created. If the fabric of the city is slowly torn apart by more and more parking, etc. then the market has its demands met, but the larger goal of preserving what makes San Francisco great is lost.
posted by ssg at 10:10 AM on November 4, 2013

In a way, historic preservation regulations (as rendered in cases like this) can be seen as eroding a city's livability from that mindset. If you have regulations that are overly protective of historic buildings in an area with a really high housing demand, or areas that are zoned for a lower density, the housing market is unable to correct for the demand by supplying new, more dense housing solutions. This makes existing housing more expensive and lower income people get pushed out.

In some cases where preservationism and built-up demand collide, you end up with facadecotmies or facadism. This garage stuff is a pretty minor variant of that type of thing, but it's fairly common in DC.
posted by LionIndex at 1:22 PM on November 4, 2013

This may be locally true but certainly is not true in most jurisdictions.

Many states offer tax incentives for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places or that are part of a historic district with said listing. (I'm not sure that this one would qualify, but it likely does since their using the Dept. of Interior design regs). Also there is a federal 20% income investment tax credit for income-producing listed properties, which this one is a rental property, so it counts. So, while, not true for all historic properties there are tax incentives in all American jurisdictions for preserving historic properties.
posted by IvoShandor at 1:26 PM on November 4, 2013

I wonder if all four cars would have to park nose-to-tail. If so, what a pain in the ass.

If you watch the video in the first link, you can get a better view of the interior and it looks rather spacious. I took a screenshot from both videos for comparison, and bumped up the levels. It looks like there would be two rows of two cars each, which would fit with the fact that this is a duplex. You wouldn't have to worry about your neighbor boxing you in, but you would have to worry about your roommate or spouse blocking you.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:16 AM on November 5, 2013

That's a slow-ass garage door to have to wait for.
posted by panaceanot at 1:48 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Especially if it's not your house and you're just trying to drive down the damn street and they're there, signaling that they're turning in... Oh, and then you have the nightmare of sharing parking spots.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:57 AM on November 5, 2013

The market demands more parking and more parking will be created.

Of course the market demands housing even more-- but the difference is that the city government does much more to block housing, so parking is what ends up getting built. Take this case: rebuilding the ground floor to create a new apartment would be right out-- so it's parking or nothing.
posted by alexei at 11:08 PM on November 5, 2013

alexei, there is no hint in the OP that the city had a problem with a ground floor apartment. It was the owner's choice to convert the space from storage and a studio to parking to increase the rent he could charge for the above-ground apartments.
posted by localroger at 5:35 AM on November 6, 2013

I expect that in order to create an apartment (the "studio" mentioned would have been unpermitted) in compliance with zoning regulations, you'd need it to include a parking space. It's already a 4-unit house in a 3-unit zone. I'm not an expert, but it seems unlikely that the city would approve.
posted by alexei at 9:41 PM on November 7, 2013

So, while, not true for all historic properties there are tax incentives in all American jurisdictions for preserving historic properties.

I want to make sure that it's clear that the federal tax credit is for rehab and renovation costs. It is not an ongoing property tax credit as the original comment suggested might apply here (I have no idea if it does to the SF property in question).

As a preservationist I can only dream of that level of incentivization. Much more common in real life are the situation a couple of years ago in my city when the historic commission was proposing an historic overlay district which would pretty much add one protection -- a review hearing for any demolition permit. Faced with this dire threat, one of the property owners relocated his tenants and razed one of our downtown's historic structures. Not a very special one, but it was a naked display of power and contempt, and it prompted the commission to shelve the entire proposal. That is reality.
posted by dhartung at 11:21 PM on November 7, 2013