Photograph by George Sakkestad

According to residents of the home where this photograph was taken, a proposed second-story addition to the house at 8 Pennsylvania Ave., in Los Gatos, will change the character of the neighborhood.

Estate Potential

With land scarce and expensive, today's dream homes often grow on the shoulders of modest forebears

By Jeff Kearns and Steve Enders

---

This is the second of two articles on housing trends in the West Valley and the efforts by local planners to maintain community standards without violating the rights of those who want to build their dream homes. This week, we look at remodels and teardowns.

---

Scott Fitzgerald's maxim "There are no second acts in American lives," may be true for people, but it's not the case with houses. In fact, the opposite is often true. In the suburbs sprawling across the country, second-story additions became part of the architectural vernacular as soon as the first post-war tracts went in.

But the national trend is magnified in the West Valley, where remodels and teardowns have become serious business as home prices continue their dizzying upward spiral.

In alluring places like Los Gatos, Saratoga and tony Monte Sereno, where home prices are more of a joke that's not funny, buyers can't always afford their dream house, and in order to get into a nice neighborhood with good schools and low crime, some families are forced to choose between a new house and an older house with "potential."

In the newspeak of real estate ads, "potential" is a polite way of saying either "the house needs help, which is the only reason you can afford it" or "this place only has one bathroom."

But exactly how much potential a house may have often becomes a subject of debate between homeowners and neighbors.

"Bulldozers" are another sore subject. Instead of buying a new home or moving from a neighborhood, recent and established residents alike sometimes elect to stay in the same spot and start over. It's more expensive than an add-on, but sometimes less so than moving--especially for established families who don't want to give up the neighbors, schools or character of the neighborhood they already bought into.

The smaller, older homes that gave the neighborhood its original charm, however, wind up in a dumpster because having two bedrooms and one bathroom doesn't hold much appeal for today's families. One recent real estate ad promoted a tiny house on a good-sized lot as having "estate potential."

---

Monster Homes: In Part 1 of this two-part story, new construction styles spark controversy between residents and newcomers.

---

Housing Disaster

Those on all sides of the issue blame the same problems for the move to add-on or tear down: the hot economy, a lack of undeveloped land, and families that want more room.

As the high-tech sector continues its expansion, jobs open up faster than companies can find bodies to fill them. But the new jobs don't bring new housing with them, and many of those bodies are commuting from new Silicon Valley outposts like Los Baños, Hollister or Tracy.

According to the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, only one unit of housing has been built for every five new jobs created in the Valley. Combine that with the fat paychecks and generous stock options that go along with the new jobs, and it's a recipe for a housing disaster.

Of course, this being Silicon Valley, there's no shortage of high-tech multimillionaires. For this legendary group, enormous trophy houses on the hillsides may be just the ticket--despite protests that the so-called "pink palaces" are ruining views and dwarfing nearby homes.

What leads to far more confrontations, however, are the remodels and teardowns.

Residents of older neighborhoods, where homes frequently are scaled much smaller than modern middle- and upper-middle-class families want, often do not appreciate second stories or demolitions.

"The land is just so extremely expensive that people want to justify the square footage of the home," Los Gatos real estate agent Chris Trapani says.

Case in point: Trapani says a little house on a half-acre lot in Monte Sereno, which was listed at $799,000, recently sold for $880,000 and attracted 11 offers. "So if you pay that much for that lot, you're going to want to build a 4,500-square-foot structure to get back your investment."

Monte Sereno's inflated real estate prices, combined with the small number of homes in the city--about 1,100--is the formula that creates the demand for "bulldozers," the small homes that get demolished to make room for a successor that might be two or three times larger.

It's especially true for small homes built early in the post-war era, which often could be just 1,250 square feet, with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a detached, one-car garage.

Trapani says families have changing needs when they come to him looking for a home, which usually means bigger. The children need their own rooms, but adults do, too: one for an office, one for the computer, maybe an extra bedroom for when the in-laws are in town. And something that feels good: "People want a limited living room but a very large family room and kitchen and open areas that they can entertain in. And lots of bathrooms," he says. "People work hard. There's a reason people put up with the level of stress, because they want a reward."

These needs are almost impossible to reconcile with sky-high prices. Often the choice for newcomers becomes whether the size of the house is more important than its location. Increasingly, fewer families have the means to get both, and the compromise often comes when families choose the right place but settle for a house with that magic attribute: potential.

Even then, the prospect of living in a construction zone for months isn't that appealing, and some families try to pick homes that are fixed up already. "People with families are much more limited with what they can do as far as remodeling," says Trapani. "A lot of people end up steering away from that because of the hassle."

As new families and wealth continue pouring into the built-out West Valley, population shifts belie the more pronounced shifts in demographics.

In recent years, populations of Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga have increased slowly, but demographic shifts have become more pronounced.

Area schools, for example, are operating at capacity, even thought there hasn't been a significant influx of new residents.

It's a symptom of a gradual turnover of existing housing stock from older families who may have been the original owners of the house and whose children moved out long ago, to some of those very children, who now have children of their own.

"It's a function of the economy," says Los Gatos Assistant Planning Director Bud Lortz. "Seniors are moving out and young people are moving in."

Monte Sereno City Manager Brian Loventhal agrees. When that city revised its general plan, a study showed that the town was getting younger. "Median age reduced drastically, from late-40s to mid- to low-40s," Loventhal says.

Sometimes, however, it's the other way around.

Dennis Byron and his wife Sue demolished their house on San Benito Avenue in Los Gatos, because it was too hard to live in. "It was literally falling apart," he says.

The house, built in 1890, had single-wall construction, no foundation, and the only electrical outlet in the kitchen was in the middle of the ceiling. On top of that, it was built without a bathroom, which was hastily added a few decades later, and the whole house measured only about 800 square feet, about the size of a large apartment unit.

The Byrons lived there for three years, but decided they wanted to stay in the area because they lived about a block from downtown. Dennis walks to work on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, and Sue had always wanted to live downtown.

Byron, who's already had seven homes in Los Gatos, says this is where they're going to stay. Even though their daughters are already grown and moved out, the new house will measure about 2,700 square feet.

That's more than triple the size of the old one, but few of the original homes on the street remain, and Byron says neighbors wanted the improvement.

Down the street, also on San Benito, Lynn Wood-Ford and Susan Berry are adding another bedroom and bathroom to their two-bed, one-bath house that dates from 1927. The couple has one 13-year-old son, and Berry recently had twins.

But instead of moving to another house, they chose to add on and remodel the interior of their home, which they bought in 1988.

"We knew we didn't have enough room," Berry says. "I always wanted to do it because I knew it would be more cost-effective than moving to another place in town, and we didn't want to leave the neighborhood--it's quiet and close to downtown and the schools."

Their application was approved without any complaints from the town or neighbors, Wood-Ford says. Perhaps this is because the addition, which is almost finished, blends seamlessly into the existing design, and only expands the ground floor.


Photograph by George Sakkestad

When Jim and Maggie Creighton decided to tear down their home in the historic Almond Grove District in Los Gatos and start anew, they preserved the building's façade, as is often required of historic homes in Los Gatos.




Whose House Is It, Anyway?

It's a tricky Scylla and Charybdis to navigate, but eventually it comes down to weighing a homeowner's right to expand with the neighborhood's right to preserve itself.

One Los Gatos battle that's been through several rounds of hearings is 8 Pennsylvania Ave., where homeowner Paul Dufresne wants to expand the first story and add a second story that will nearly triple the size of the 1,176-square-foot home.

Several neighbors, including those who live one house up the hill and look out over the top of the house, have opposed the project at several steps along the way.

The Planning Commission and Town Council both denied the application last year. The application has been back five times. The commission put the plan on hold and requested a lower roof line and a design that was more sensitive to neighbor's concerns. Last week, planners approved the plan. An appeal could still take place.

Homeowners at 66 Mariposa Ave. in Los Gatos have applied for a demolition. Homeowners Richard and Pamela Katz want to tear down the stucco home and put up a two-story house on the site. But even though many neighbors are in favor of the demolition, a small but vocal group has pushed to block the project so far, and gathered 16 signatures against it.

The Planning Commission asked the homeowners for a redesign in February, and the project comes back to the commission in April.

At the end of the same street, at 73 Mariposa, is a modern, two-story gray home that was the subject of a much noisier battle at the end of the '80s, when the owners fought to add on to a smaller, older home.

The new home was approved in 1989, but after many residents complained they didn't receive notices about the project, the town adopted a new policy in 1990 that required sending notices to nearby owners for minor residential projects.

History's Future

To keep the city from changing too quickly for its own good, Saratoga adopted some tough regulations for new homes in existing neighborhoods.

According to Community Development Director James Walgren, new two-story homes aren't approved unless the design minimizes the roofline of the structure or integrates the second story away from the street.

The city also started requiring that the Planning Commission get a look at any second-story additions, complete with notices inviting all neighbors within a 300-foot radius to look at the plans and come have their say at a public hearing.

Walgren says this was set up to prevent neighborhood disasters that slipped through the process and left everyone in the area wondering how a subdivision of one-story ranch homes suddenly came to include one house that towers over the others and looks down into surrounding properties.

"New homeowners move into neighborhoods where people have generally been there 25 years and put up something that's out of character with what's there historically," Walgren says.

Three-car garages facing the street generally don't get past the review stage either, unless they are turned away from the street or are articulated by the architecture. "It's just not a very friendly design element to have facing the street," Walgren says.

In the city's historical areas, including the "Heritage Lane" on Saratoga Avenue, houses that are renovated face increased scrutiny from the city's Heritage Preservation Commission in addition to the normal design review process.

Walgren says the commission checks those applications to make sure they fit the historical look of the subject neighborhood.

Additionally, it reviews proposed changes on the some 110 homes on the city's historical inventory list--those designated by the city as historic, and those that can be determined "landmark homes" by filing appropriate applications.

This was the subject of some debate at a recent City Council meeting, as homeowners expressed concern over the ability of the commission to review their plans. Because the last inventory was completed around 1988, some new homeowners didn't even know their homes were on the inventory list. Also, some said, that if they wanted to update portions of the house, they potentially had a long road ahead to do so.

Had they known this, the homeowners said they might not have bought those particular homes that were advertised as having lots of "potential."

The meeting's debate led to a decision that those on the inventory should be notified they're on the list every two years.

No-Demo Zone

In Los Gatos, the rules are even more strict, especially in the historic districts, where tough rules add another dimension to add-ons. In those areas, any construction must go before the Historic Preservation Committee, and demolitions are rarely approved. Instead of knocking down a house, the facades of historic homes sometimes must be saved while the rest of the building is rebuilt.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the town created an incentive for homeowners to rebuild their old homes by fast-tracking applications through the tricky permit process, while proposals for new homes had to jump through the usual hoops.

Almost every homeowner chose to rebuild (as did downtown business owners), and as a result, the town was added to the National Historic Register in 1990. Santa Cruz, which didn't encourage rebuilding, lost its spot on the register.

Town officials also wrote the "Pre-41" rule, which classifies any house built in 1941 or earlier as historic. It's a simple rule that protects entire neighborhoods, and eliminates the need for town officials to make the designations house-by-house. That's how Palo Alto chose to go through the process, and it got bogged down in a quagmire of angry homeowners and endless hearings that have been dragging on for years and show no sign of closure.

Los Gatos Planning Director Lee Bowman says the strict regulations came about after people complained about changing neighborhoods.

"People buy in neighborhoods because they like the neighborhood and the schools, then they want to change the homes," Bowman says. "If you took the existing San Benito neighborhood and tore down all the houses and put up 'pink palaces' it wouldn't be Los Gatos anymore."

Police Report

Carl Heintze defends lawyers

Photo: Community Read-In

Photo: Sidesaddle & Co. appear at Woodhaven West

New in Town: East on Main

Picture From the Past: Residents once welcomed paying boarders

Sports Briefs

Los Gatos dominates at Stanford Invitational

Individual Wildcat swimmers star, but team loses

Los Gatos Little League

LG baseball, tennis, golf, volleyball