 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Time runs out for old house
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, INVERNESS -- Saved more than a month ago from demolition by fire, the historical house at 105 W Grace St. will now face demolition by wrecking ball. The Inverness Architectural/Aesthetic Review Committee voted 4-2 Thursday to allow the property owner, Joanne Palmieri, to tear down the dilapidated house so she can build a one-story office building at the corner of W Grace and S Pine Avenue. The board's decision came after no one agreed to move and restore the abandoned house, the one-time home of Judge E.C. May that was likely built in the 1910s. Joseph Mason, a Brooksville attorney representing the property owner, said Palmieri received eight inquiries from people interested in moving the house. But none of them would sign an agreement to move the house within 30 days and assume all liability and moving costs, Mason said. "Admitedly, it's going to be a hassle to move that house," Mason said. "I'm not surprised she didn't get any replies." Movers would have to carve up the two-story house in order to wheel it under the overhead utility wires, he said. The process is expensive and difficult enough with a sturdy building, let alone a rotted wooden house that has already been moved once. Some of the roof shingles have flaked off and the gingerbread railings around the porch have been peeled away. The house's windows, including a unique elliptical rose window that peers into the attic, have been boarded up. The Queen Anne/Colonial-revival house is "not livable" and has "no economic value," according to property appraiser's records. Citrus County Historical Society representative Sophia Diaz-Fonseca lamented to the committee Thursday that the house "has been stripped of all its features and is in grievous disrepair." "I don't see how it's feasible, in my mind, to move that house," said committee chairman Tom Mayberry. "At the last meeting I called it a money pit, and it is." But two committee members, Linda Bega and Willard Bowsky, voted against demolishing the house. "I know there were some very interested parties, and I feel they could have been pursued more," Bega said. Originally scheduled for demolition Sept. 1 as part of a training burn by the volunteer firefighters, the four-bedroom house earned an 11th-hour reprieve when officials realized it sat on the city's list of historic properties. The list contains about 200 buildings, all at least a half-century old, that must receive Architectural/Aesthetic Review Committee approval before significant renovations or demolitions can be made. At an Aug. 30 emergency meeting, the committee postponed the demolition for 30 days to see if anyone would move and restore the house. In the following weeks, the Citrus County Historical Society heard from 13 people interested in saving the old house. But their interest waned when they discovered that there might be fees or other expenses to move the building, Diaz-Fonseca said. The notion that Palmieri was trying to sell the house, however, was "manufactured from the ether," Mason said. The agreement simply stated that anyone taking the house must pay for all permitting and moving costs, he said. "She was going to give it to the Fire Department to burn," Mason said. "Why would she charge someone to move it?" The delay will cost Palmieri, however. The volunteer firefighters would have demolished the building for free Sept. 1 but have refused to reschedule the exercise, Mason said. That means Palmieri will have to hire a wrecking crew to tear down the house. After Thursday's meeting, Palmieri told the Citrus Times she had not yet set a date to demolish the building. She would not comment on what the demolition costs would be. The city could avoid some of these problems in the future, Diaz-Fonseca said, by making sure property owners and prospective buyers know if a building is on the city's historical list. When Palmieri bought the W Grace Street house last year, she said, nothing in the property appraiser's records, the title or deed to the property indicated that it was on the historic list. Diaz-Fonseca said any historical information about a property should be shared with the property appraiser, the tax collector, county government, law enforcement agencies, the Fire Department and the Realtors and builders associations. She offered the historical society's help in sharing information with those agencies, as well as sending a letter to all property owners who own buildings on the list. "Without the proper safeguards in place," Diaz-Fonseca said, "this loss of historic structures will continue."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Citrus Times |
