Proposed Heights guidelines would restrict renovation, new construction – Houston Chronicle

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Staff

Erin Patchell checks out a new light fixture in her Heights home with her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell checks out a new light fixture in her Heights home with her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Mark VanDoren, owner of APD Design, has designed homes and additions int he Heights area for 25 years

Mark VanDoren, owner of APD Design, has designed homes and additions int he Heights area for 25 years

Mark VanDoren, owner of APD Design, has designed homes and additions int he Heights area for 25 years

Mark VanDoren, owner of APD Design, has designed homes and additions int he Heights area for 25 years

A home on Arlington listing that it has been historically renovated in the Historic Heights neighborhood on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

A home on Arlington listing that it has been historically renovated in the Historic Heights neighborhood on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Home on Arlington and 11th Street that needed approval for renovation in the Historic Heights neighborhood on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Home on Arlington and 11th Street that needed approval for renovation in the Historic Heights neighborhood on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister, Holly Fedora on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Houston. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle )

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister.

Erin Patchell holds up a new light fixture in her Heights home as she seeks advice from her sister.

Part of the motivation for the city's set of design guidelines and approval process is to keep larger homes from overwhelming smaller ones with different aesthetic features in the historic Heights.

Part of the motivation for the city's set of design guidelines and approval process is to keep larger homes from overwhelming smaller ones with different aesthetic features in the historic Heights.

Proposed Heights guidelines would restrict renovation, new construction

Tina Nelkin's friends urged her to get a home security system when she moved to the Houston Heights 30 years ago. The neighborhood, she says, was notable for sagging front porches on tiny old wooden homes with broken refrigerators and furniture strewn in overgrown front yards.

"It was like going to grandma's house," Nelkin recalled Monday. "That's what people move to the Heights for."

It's since become a sought-after inner-city neighborhood where home prices average about a half-million dollars. Most of the original small homes, most of them built around the turn of the century, were buried beneath super-sized additions or demolished and replaced. The activity drew the attention of city planners who designated the region a historic district and waged a yearslong struggle to regulate how homeowners there could alter their historic homes.

"You can't do anything here without a permit," Nelkin said. "And we love that."

Now, for the first time, the city is preparing to publish a 225-page set of guidelines for building and modifying homes in the historic Heights, listing in explicit detail what can and cannot, should and should not be done. Until now, officials say, the process for permit approval has been subjective and reliant on substantial guesswork.

"If you are altering or building something new, these are the criteria you must meet to do that," said Margaret Wallace Brown, deputy director of the city planning department. "It will eliminate the guesswork that everybody has been operating under for the past several years."

A final public meeting will be held Sept. 28 at the United Way Building on Waugh, and the draft of the new guidelines then will be sent to City Council.

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If approved, the new guidelines would specify regulations on the size, height and footprint of additions to the historic buildings, as well as detailed stylistic guidance on everything from window frames and doors and siding, chimneys and porches.

Some disillusioned by efforts

The document represents a major change in Houston's uneven push for historic preservation. Since the passage of Houston's original preservation ordinance in 1995, planners have worked to strengthen the rules and provide means of enforcement to prevent alteration of particular buildings.

The Heights would become by far the largest historic district brought under neighborhood-specific design guidelines. While the city considers it a major achievement, some designers and builders fear the rules infringe on property rights and could stifle development.

"How can we have this kind of control over someone's property rights? This is Texas," said Mark VanDoren, owner of Heights-based APD Design. "You don't tell us what to do with our property in Texas."

VanDoren has watched the preservation effort unfold for more than 25 years, as he designed new and remodeled homes in the Heights. Initially he took part in a citizens' land-use committee to protest construction of tall townhomes rising amid the squat bungalows.

Yet he grew disillusioned by the preservation effort by what he saw as politics and power play.

"Things have gotten way out of hand," he said. "They're going to make it more and more restrictive."

Any modifications to historic structures in the historic district currently require city approval and a "certificate of appropriateness."

Erin Patchell has confronted some of those restrictions. Two years ago, she and her husband bought a lot with two structures on it at 12th and Arlington. They drew up plans to adjoin the two structures, but the city historical commission denied them. The commission didn't like their use of brick siding, the planned height of the addition and the shape of the roof line, Patchell said. Months later, their amended plan was approved, but only after a tie-breaker vote.

"While I support historic preservation, I will never go through this process again," she said. "And this is before the new guidelines."

Her plan would not be approved under the proposed new guidelines, she said. She worried that the burdensome restrictions would discourage anyone from buying historic properties, leaving them to decay.

'Borderline insane'

Such experiences aren't particularly rare. Rob Hellyer, presidents of Heights-based Premier Remodeling and a member of the city historical commission, said he's seen homeowners brought to tears at commission meetings, frustrated by the slow and seemingly fickle process for design approval.

He said that "absolutely" the guidelines are needed.

"There just aren't real clear guidelines right now. A lot of it is based on subjective judgment," he said.

City approval in the district is required for replacing doors, windows, siding or any historical materials, adding new rooms, carports or awnings and any new construction. The new rules specify size and height restrictions for any add-ons.

That's a point that VanDoren fears could hurt development in the area, making additions not worth the investment. In one recent project, he said, a homeowner wanted a 1,000-square-foot addition to a $459,000 house. Restrictions allowed him to increase the size by only 40 percent to the home footprint. He bid that work out for $248,000, far more than the value the addition would add to the house.

So instead, VanDoren fast-tracked a much larger second-story addition, knowing it would be prohibited by the time the new guidelines passed.

Under the guidelines, he fears that additions will become cost-prohibitive for the smaller bungalows, which will be left to decay beside $1.5 million homes.

"What the city is doing is borderline insane," he said.

The Houston Heights Association said it had no opinion on the design guidelines.

'You have to protect it'

For others, the guidelines represent progress in Houston, which has a notoriously poor record on preservation. This city adopted its first preservation 32 years after Los Angeles did so, said David Bush, acting executive director of Preservation Houston.

He said the new Heights guidelines bring Houston one step closer to the standard practices in big U.S. cities.

He called the restrictions necessary to maintain a unique character, preventing historic neighborhoods from becoming strip malls.

"You can always build new," he said. "You can't build old. You have to protect it."

The Heights posed a particular challenge in crafting cohesive design guidelines, though, because the neighborhood grew in several phases, with large homes for wealthy people in the early days, followed by smaller bungalows as the area grew less affluent.

The city plans next to develop similar development documents for seven more historic districts: Woodland Heights, updates to the Old Sixth Ward, Norhill, Market Square, Freeland and Glennbrook Valley.

"You shouldn't just take a special place and turn it into Anywhere, USA," Nori Minster, who owns a home on Harvard Street, said. "Sometimes I worry."

Correction: This article has been update to note David Bush's title with Preservation Houston is acting executive director.

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Proposed Heights guidelines would restrict renovation, new construction - Houston Chronicle