Posted on 11/09/2004 8:07:15 AM PST by SmithL
Wired Magazine co-founder Louis Rossetto Jr. is embroiled in a bitter fight with his Berkeley hills neighbors over his elderly mother's attempt to put an addition on a home she owns near his.
Opponents want to have the home, built in 1937 and designed by famed architect William Wurster, declared a landmark -- blocking 87-year-old Marguerite Rossetto's wishes to add a ground-floor bedroom so that she won't have climb stairs.
Critics contend the house at 1650 La Vereda Road should be protected because it is an early modernist masterpiece designed by Wurster, a former dean of UC Berkeley's architecture school who has a campus building named after him.
City planners are not convinced, and they are recommending that the City Council tonight refuse to delay the Rossettos' plans, which would add 900 square feet to the 1,400-square-foot house.
Marguerite Rossetto, who also wants space for live-in care when she needs it, has sent the council a picture of herself showing a bruise that she suffered in a fall at a party in June, according to her son.
The city's zoning adjustments board approved her plans in July, and the project will proceed unless the council intercedes. City Councilwoman Betty Olds, who represents the area, said Monday that she thought the addition Rossetto wants is reasonable and well designed and should be approved.
Responding to an August application from neighbors Brian Viani and Sue Martin, however, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission recently asked that it be allowed to hold hearings on the matter. Efforts to reach Viani and Martin were unsuccessful.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Don't be silly.
If the house were to, say, "accidentally" burn down, then the neighbors wouldn't have an argument. ;^)
Well then, don't make it a permanant attachment to the house. Bring a double-wide trailer in.
Heck, I got turned down for an addition on an ordinary house in Alexandria, VA. The planning commission said it would block the public's view up the hill OF MY PROPERTY. Communists! I moved away from there.
Actually, they probably would. After the '92 Oakland hills fire, many people took advantage of the situation to convert what was 1500-2,000 sq. ft. homes into 4,000 + sq. ft. 'mini-mansions'. Oftentimes this meant changing what was a two story into three or sometimes more.
Those who acted quickly got their new homes built, while those who delayed had to meet new regulations which set height limits to preserve views.I cannot say with a 100% certainty that this also occurred in Berkeley, but it is probable.
These are the same paranoid clucks that obsess on the Patriot Act, and don't see the relative intrusion into average people's everyday lives.
Oh no, no, no. We can't possibly change anything about Social Security or Medicare because that harms the elderly. But we can darn sure keep them from having a downstairs bedroom so that they can live safely in their own homes! Now that's true liberalism!
This would make a great fiction story.
Marguerite Rossetto, 87 years old, was surrounded. Commie neighbors to the left of her. Socialists on the right. What did you expect for Berkeley?
The old women, arthritic knees creaking, painfully climbed the stairs to her bedroom where her deceased husband's old sea bag lay in back of the closet. She opened it and pulled out the green World War II bazooka her husband carried onto the Normandy beach 60 years ago. Below it were a half dozen rockets.
She propped the business end of the bazooka out the window and raised the sights, calculating the distance to her neighbor's picture window. She loaded a rocket and placed a second one at her knee for quick reloading in case she missed.
"All right, you California Nazi bastards," she screamed out the window. "Don't like my bedroom? Well, see how you like me remodelling your home - Rossetto style."
Point taken!
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