Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Save the Kretzler House!


This is a photograph taken from around 1912 on the corner of 6th and Main. The Kretzler house is still there and it looks abosolutely wonderful with all the flowers. Enterprise reporter Chris Fyall posted an excellent article with great prictures about the effort to save the house. (click here)
Unfortunately, the owner of the property wants to redevelop it, but that doesn't mean we can't move the house. On June 17th, the council will be discussing a proposal to use private funds to move the house unto a corner of the civic playfield, which the city leases from the school district. It's a very fascinating proposal that uses privately raised money plus money from the current land owner who has a desire to save the house. The Historic Museum, the Edmonds Historic Commision, and Edmonds-South Snohomish Historical Society are all involved in the effort to save the house. I hope they are succesful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Boy, I hope someone on the council is going to correct the misinformation given to the council by Duane Bowman at the June 17 regarding the setback requirements in the P-Zone.

The plain language of the code does not require a 25 ft setback from the track as stated by Duane. Also the code says 25ft from the P-zone property line to the structure not from the P-zone property as depicted in his drawing of the required setbacks. In fact, how the code reads is, from the R Zone property line a 25ft buffer must be maintained. In the Civic Playfield situation there is a 17ft alley and the structure would need to be 8 feet from the property line in order to satisfy this standard. Also it appears he did not included the width of the sidewalks in his calculations.

There are several buildings in the surrounding vicinity with similar setbacks as the one proposed for this historic home.

It appears the Mayor just doesn't want to save the house. Maybe, the staff has been commanded to thwart the process to prevent the saving.