Rose Garden Resident
News
Couple forced to dismantle their Elm Street dream home project
By Mary Gottschalk
The Cinderella story of 960 Elm St. doesn't have a happy ending.
No one knows that better than Jenny Moore, who dreamed of restoring a 1909 Craftsman bungalow and moving into it before the structure turned 100.
Instead, Moore and her husband, Brent Gregory, have spent the last several weeks dismantling their dream and putting the land they bought for it up for sale.
The story started in early 2004, when Moore saw the bungalow listed as "available" on the San Jose Redevelopment Agency website.
The bungalow originally was built at 126 Viola Ave., now a parking lot adjacent to the San Jose Convention Center.
A 2001 environmental impact report listed the house as having historical significance, so it was spared the wrecking ball that felled 10 other homes on Viola.
Using her real estate agent skills, Moore located an oversize, quarter-acre lot for sale at the corner of Elm and McKendrie streets. An old farmhouse with a water tower attached to the rear sat to one side of the lot, with a garden on the other.
Moore could see moving the bungalow to where the garden was, living in the farmhouse while restoring the bungalow and then selling the farmhouse to help pay for the costs.
Although under current city regulations the lot wasn't large enough to divide into two, Moore enlisted the support of the planning department, Preservation Action Council and the College Park Neighborhood Association to get it rezoned from single-family to planned development.
On April 9, 2002, Moore and her husband bought the farmhouse and lot for $565,000 and the bungalow for $1.
At every step, San Jose city employees were supportive.
The planning director initiated the rezoning, saving the couple a $10,000 filing fee. The rezoning was processed in less than a month, which is almost unheard of in San Jose.
Additionally, the redevelopment agency extended the deadline for moving the house from its city lot twice.
On Aug. 29, 2004, a crew from Kelly Brothers House Movers picked the house up from its storage site on Almaden Boulevard and placed it on Elm and McKendrie before sunrise.
Moore and Gregory started accumulating trim, windows and doors from demolition sales and scavenging to replace what had been stripped from the house.
However, soon after the bungalow was moved to Elm Street, activity ceased.
Unknown to neighbors with high expectations, Moore and Gregory were involved in a failed investment project that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"In the end, after exploring all options for substitute financing, we had to give up on the house project, and that still pains us tremendously."
After neighborhood complaints started piling up, code enforcement stepped in.
At a Nov. 9, 2006, appeals hearing board, Moore and Gregory were told they must either obtain and finalize all permits or that they must move or demolish the bungalow.
Moore and Gregory finally decided to deconstruct the bungalow "carefully so that we could reuse virtually all of the materials elsewhere."
All material, the house mover's beams and the cyclone fence around the property should be gone by the end of April, Moore says.
The city rezoned the house back to single-family in March.
The property and 1,961-square-foot farmhouse is now listed by Moore for $799,000.
