Let’s not blow up our neighborhoods
“The Rock,” a painting by Peter Blume, hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago. It depicts a brick home disintegrating into pieces while workmen construct a new home on the same ground. A woman kneels in a pile of rubble, her arms outstretched to a “shattered but enduring” rock.
Blume created the painting in the 1940s, long before teardowns became the norm in cities where land is so valuable, and yearning for gigantic houses so great, that people buy lots, tear down the older homes and build super-size homes in the empty spaces.
In our Economic Outlook ‘06 special section, published Saturday, it was reported that the average price of a home in Spokane County shot up 15 percent. In one year. And the average price of a home in Kootenai County shot up 30 percent. In one year. The average price of a home in Spokane County is now $170,000. In Kootenai County, it’s $210,000.
Good news for our economy, but…
Hey, there’s always a “but” with me as I watch North Idaho and Spokane grow, because I fret that unless we do growth right, we’ll destroy the uniqueness that makes the Inland Northwest appealing. So, as our housing market steamrolls, may we guard against:
Honey, I blew up the house. Last month, my husband and I visited his brother and wife who live in a Chicago suburb. Neighborhoods in the North Shore suburbs resemble the quaint neighborhoods sprinkled throughout Spokane and North Idaho.
The streets there are lined with trees grown fierce with windy Chicago winters. Homes, many built in the 1920s and ‘30s, have long settled into their foundations. Some resemble Midwest prairie farmhouses.
But as we walked these North Shore neighborhoods, we felt as if we needed hard hats because of the construction everywhere. The older farmhouses are being replaced with $1 million-plus faux farmhouses, some with massive cupolas. Not a pretty portrait.
Most of these new houses fill every inch of property allowed by setback rules, dwarfing the older dwellings on the block. It reminds me of the movie “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid,” in which a 150-foot toddler walks through the streets, unaware of the damage he’s doing.
In some Inland Northwest neighborhoods, you still see grand homes next to medium-size homes next to teeny-tiny homes. This is part of our charm here. Which leads me to my next fret factor:
The demise of the dollhouses. Near Audubon Park on Spokane’s North Side, a neatly kept home sits deep within a long, thin lot. Imagine a thatched roof, and hobbits could move in. Adorable.
Similar “dollhouses” dot neighborhoods throughout our region. I love dollhouses, even though – disclosure time – I live in a development without them.
Dollhouses, which average about 750 square feet, speak a truth about life in the Inland Northwest. You can still live side-by-side here, whether it’s just you and your dog in a dollhouse or six of you in a three-story Colonial.
Leaders in Spokane and North Idaho wonder how to keep our young people here. We already have a built-in strategy. Young people can still afford dollhouses and fixer-uppers. They buy homes early in their adult lives, building up equity while sinking in their roots.
Teardowns aren’t happening much – yet – in the Inland Northwest, according to real estate agents I spoke with for this column. I know, homeowners possess the right to build whatever they dang please, as long as their plans meet land-use requirements.
But as the bulldozers head our way, we need some women and men willing to kneel in the rubble, reminding us of the enduring value of our eclectic neighborhoods.