Masters of our (eminent) domain

A year ago, Luis and I and about 30 of our neighbors listened as an attorney told us that we probably didn't stand to do well if a the city resorted to using eminent domain to take our homes for private development. "Find out what's on the table," he said. We did. At the time, we all wondered whether we did the right thing. But in light of recent events, I'd say that attorney gave us pretty damn good advice.

By turning lemons into lemonade, we became property owners once again. And what a learning experience it's been. We've met with our architect a number of times for the past 4 months to ponder plans and materials and possibilities. A few weeks ago we finalized our interior layouts, but there's still no guarantee the planning commission will approve them. The commission looks for contextual issues, such as whether you're blocking someone else's air and light. Air rights are just as important as land rights. But if we get the plan we all want, we'll have a pretty amazing space in the end. Just last week we decided to add a hot tub to the common roof deck.

Our architect is currently experimenting with different facades. At our last meeting she presented two options, one reminiscent of Le Corbusier, the other a more interesting vertical design using cement board that echoes the position of the windows. I liked the first design, but everyone else thought it looked too much like an office building. The second option was attractive to all of us, but we happened to see an example of cement board on a local building and decided that it had too many problems, so we're looking at other materials.

The big mystery remains, what is the original facade made of? The bottom floor is brick, and the top two floors are frame. The former owners put up vinyl siding on the front "to make it look pretty" and aluminum siding on the back. It's hard to tell what's underneath the siding--wood or brick. Yesterday we tried to take off some of the siding, but there were so many layers of insulation, tar paper, and plywood underneath we couldn't get to the actual facade. I removed all the drop ceiling tiles on the second floor and noticed that all the beams were wood, but sheetrock still covered the walls and I couldn't tell what the outside of the building was made of. If it is wood, that opens up more options to us. We could easily fix the uneven window arrangements, or we could tear down the facade and start from scratch.

This morning we had our first pitfall. When Luis went to our building to get his car, he found that both doors had been tampered with. It looked like someone had tried to break in. On the back roof he noticed a hose and some boxes, as well as a small hole in the roof. When he put the pieces together, he surmised that some local kids had brought boxes of fireworks up to our roof and set them off. They started a small fire in our building sometime during the night, and the fire department came and tried to open the doors. No major damage was done. The fire inspectors came to look at the site. The first thing I thought was that we would be fined for having exposed wires hanging from the ceiling where the tiles were, but that didn't happen.

We have a long way to go before we get our zoning variance (assuming we get it) and renovate the building. It's been an exiting and fascinating process of discovery so far. A building is very much like a person: the more you get to know it, the more you get to know its deepest, darkest secrets.