Still Not Thinking about Selling

They are at it again,  Last week someone from Muffley & /Associates "Land Acquisition Team" left handwritten (but probably not written by the signer) at Lynsley's house and at ours, and I think he also talked to Kathy.  Here is Lynsley's card:

And here's ours:

The text of the two is nearly but not quite identical.  Here is ours:

Dear Neighbor,

I have a lovely young couple who absolutely loves [sic] your street.  They have asked me to reach out to you about your house specifically. They are ready to pay a premium for a special place to call home!  They want to know if you are interested in selling?  Please call me when you recieve [sic] this so we can discuss a price that may interest you!

Thank you, 

Jarrett Reeves [initialed "JR", followed by a phone number]

This is frustrating on so many levels.  There is the fake familiarity of "Dear Neighbor," and the "lovely young couple who absolutely love your street."  There's the implication that this lovely young couple is "specifically" interested in our house (as well as Kathy's and Lynsley's and who knows how many others), no doubt because our houses are so nice -- or maybe because they think they are teardowns, which most of us find pretty offensive.

Of course, if there really was a "lovely young couple" who wanted to live on our street, there's Danielle's house, that's been on the market for a while now.  

There's the lot where the duplex used to be, that is now home to random construction debris and a swamp.  There's the other duplex, on the corner at Cumberland, where a builder got a variance to build "an English country cottage-style home" but nothing has happened yet.  If you're interested, though, here's what they say it will look like, after they cut down the trees and build it:

And most famously, there is the site where the apartments used to be, where the city had to approve building three houses on two lots because they made a mistake on a planning map maybe ten years ago and the property was purchased based on that planning map.  Nothing has happened for years there, except damaging trees and periodic stop work orders because of tree damage and erosion.

Periodically signs for real estate companies or developers appear there, but nothing has happened.  Recently new, very large signs appeared, which may be the harbinger of new, very large houses to follow.  Or maybe not -- we'll see.

So, if there really is a "lovely young couple" who absolutely love our street, they have lots of options.  Those options do not include purchasing and demolishing Lynsley's, Kathy and Steve's, or our houses, though.  The Land Acquisition Team at Muffley and Associates may want to make note of that and save themselves some time.

Why Dogs are Good for the Neighborhood

Leonard, the dog we adopted from Atlanta Lab Rescue last summer, is doing better.  Tom says he's now "doggier" than he used to be, and I think that's right.  Even though he still doesn't ask to go into the backyard regularly, he does occasionally, and we can now get him to go outside with the promise of a treat (he's not big on dog biscuits, but he'll do anything for Pupperoni).  So we end up walking him at least twice a day and sometimes more frequently. 

Although I still have one child living at home, somehow it works out that I end up doing the preponderance of the dog walking, at least when I am home.  Tom certainly helps out -- often walking him while I'm at work or sometimes while I'm making dinner -- but when I'm around I do most of it.  And being out on the street with the dog once or twice a day, I've seen the changes day by day in the new house that's being built and the one that's being renovated, and the lack of anything at all happening at the corner, when the apartments used to be.  I've seen babysitters arrive early in the morning and leave at the end of the workday, and I've met neighbors I'd never met before, even though I've lived here a really long time.  And there are other neighbors -- almost all neighbors with dogs -- that I now see regularly enough that I know them better than I did.  If you see the same people enough times, you know them well enough to talk to them, and if you know them well enough to talk to them you might get to know them better.

Caroline gave me a copy of  "Life Between Buildings:  Using Public Space" for Christmas.  In about two hundred pages of text and photographs, Danish architect Jan Gehl picks up where Jane Jacobs left off to identify specific features of the built environment that create places where people want to be.  There are things we have to do -- go to work, go to the grocery store, go home -- that we will do whether they are fun or not.  But if there is something interesting along the way-- if on the way home, you walk by a neighborhood bar or coffee shop and spot friends -- you might linger or take a detour,  Then there are things that you do just for fun, that you don't have to do at all.  And if we are making a choice, we prefer lively streets to dead ones, a shopping district with interesting, unpredictable things to see and lots of people and musicians on the street corners rather than a mall, and places that are pleasant to be rather than, say, walking along Buford Highway.  A common denominator here is there being other people around who might be doing something interesting, or with whom we might strike up a conversation, or we might already know and could catch up on what they've been doing since the last time we saw them.  This is what the book is about,  It sounds obvious, but it's not, or at least it wasn't to me.

"Low-intensity contact is also a situation from which other forms of contact can grow," according to Gehl.  

"Contacts that develop spontaneously in connection with merely being where there are others are usually very fleeting -- a short exchange of words, a brief discussion with the next man on the bench, chatting with a child in a bus, watching someone working and asking a few questions,and so forth.  From this simple level, contacts can grow to other levels, as the participants wish.  Meeting, being present in the same space, is in each of these circumstances the prime prerequisite."

If "being in the same space" is the prerequisite, getting out of your house and not being sealed up in your car is really important.  He continues,

"The possibility of meeting neighbors and co-workers often in connection with daily comings and goings implies a valuable opportunity to establish and later maintain acquaintances in a relaxed and undemanding way....Frequent meetings in connection with daily activities increase chances of developing contacts with neighbors, a fact noted in many surveys.  With frequent meetings friendships and the contact network are maintained in a far simpler and less demanding way than if friendship must be kept up by telephone and invitation.  If this is the case, it is often rather difficult to maintain contact, because more is always demanded of the participants when meetings must be arranged in advance."

Every once in a while, someone goes crazy on one of the neighborhood message boards or email lists about dog waste left in their yards, or in plastic bags in their trash cans.  (Trash cans?  Really?)  (My favorite recent one included a long post about what a health hazard dog poop was, full of coliform bateria and other microbial agents, followed by a response to the effect of "I can see why people don't pick it up after their dog - they are afraid.")  Dogs are good for the neighborhood because neighborhoods with people who walk their dogs are going to have closer social connections with their neighbors.

I have to stop writing now. I have to go walk my dog.

Research Made Easy

There are three construction dumpsters on the street right now.  Here's the update.

At the incredibly large house on the other side of Kathy and Steve's house, the one with the great views of our back yards, the siding is up, the windows are in, and the brickwork that covers the foundation is getting done.  The architect has posted his name in front of the house, suggesting a certain disconnect in perception between him and most of us who live nearby.

The siding on the house is yellow, and I assumed that was the final color that the house would be.  That seemed to me to be one of the less objectionable things about it, but Tom thought it was a completely terrible color and was speculating that it was just primer.  Now several different colors of gray have appeared on the front of the house.  I am hoping maybe we'll get to vote for which color we like best.

It seems like that would be a small concession to the neighbors who have been inconvenienced by construction vehicles that obstruct our driveways and the nails left in the street.  One day last week I picked up three 2-1/2 inch nails from the pavement in front of this house.  

Two houses down, at the duplex, they've started removing trees.  Lynsley said that last Wednesday her house shook when they brought them down.

The picture below was taken back in September, after the city posted the announcement that the owner was allowed to remove some trees.  It's not a very good picture -- the back yard was very overgrown -- but they were big trees.  And now they're down.

The only good news on the construction front (at least I hope it's good news) is at the corner of Wessyngton and North Highland, across the street from the still-vacant lots were the apartments used to be.  That house sold a few months ago and has been vacant for a while, but now there's work going on there.  It looks like the insides of the house are getting ripped out, which suggests renovation and not demolition.  They are taking apart the garage - the white building on the right side of the photo below, so maybe they plan to add on to the house.  Or maybe they just didn't like the garage.

There's an article in the New York Times today about researching one's future neighbors, about how neighbors really matter to lots of people, and how the real estate agents either can't or won't tell you anything much about them.  (This being New York, the neighbors are in your building, not on your street, but the principle still holds.)  Since the real estate agent is unlikely to know anything about our street other than which houses might be future knock-downs, I will provide some helpful information that will be easily available to anyone interested in our street who can spell it properly (admittedly, not the easiest thing) and do a Google search.  

Tuesday night a small dog, owned by the parents of one of our neighbors, escaped from their daughter's house and made a run for it.  This prompted a street-wide search involving a large number of people.  Sally brought over Christina's father to give me a description of the dog and Christina's phone number so I could send an email out, which I did.  Separately, another neighbor posted the missing dog information on the street's Facebook page, and the neighbor that had found the dog posted it on Nextdoor.  (Myself, I don't have a problem with redundant systems.)  The exchange on Facebook that followed the dog's return said it all.  Several expressions of relief that Christina's parents had their dog back, and then Christina said thank you, and how relieved her mother was, and "she also commented about what an amazing street we live on!"

That's our street.  If this sounds good to you but >$1 million for one of the new houses is outside of your budget, there's a house for lease right now.  One the plus side:  immediate availability, as best I can tell.  On the down side:  it's between the first and the second construction sites described here, and soon there will be neighbors on both sides with great views of your back yard.  But if this is the kind of neighborhood you want -- a great neighborhood and great neighbors at a more affordable price, or your dog is an escape artist -- it might be worth putting up with the noise for now.  The lack of privacy in the backyard, unfortunately, is forever.

Under Construction on Wessyngton Road

We've been watching with a mixture of curiosity and foreboding the construction going on nearby.  First, they took out all the trees in the backyard.  They did this because the house they are building extends to completely fill what had been the backyard.

This picture (above) was taken last weekend, when they were framing in the basement.  Given that this is what the house looked like on Monday morning when I went to work, imagine my surprise when I came home from a short trip Wednesday afternoon to this:

One floor a day had been added to the house.  This was Thursday:

This has generated a lot of discussion among those of us who live at this end of the street.  We are no longer commenting on how quickly this happened (and it was very quick) but now the conversation is about how astonished we are that a house of this size is being put on a 50 foot wide lot on our street.  

Just to be completely clear, the word that is being used most frequently is "monstrosity."  Our neighbor Scott had the best characterization, that it was a Dunwoody mansion turned sideways.  We will have a clear view from our backyard of second story windows on the other side of Kathy and Steve's house.

Sometime before too long (probably not long at all, given the speed at which this is being built) the construction will be done and we will no longer have construction noise scaring the dogs, debris in the street flattening our tires, trucks blocking the street while people stand around looking at blueprints, and mud tracked from the construction site into the street.  

(In spite of the above "Notice to Comply," I don't think they ever did clean it up but it did eventually rain.  Too bad for the South Fork of Peachtree Creek.)

At some point we may stop being horrified by this behemoth of a house.  Maybe the exterior finishing will be so fabulous that we won't mind that it is at least 4 times as large as the adjacent houses.  Maybe they will plant some trees in front of it and in 30 years it won't be so visible.  Maybe the builder is planning on putting an invisibility cloak over the back three-quarters of the house and we won't even be able to see it.  Or maybe we'll just get used to it.

The thing I am really worried about is what kind of neighbors will end up living in a house like this.  It is not that I think that people who want 6000+  square foot houses are by definition bad neighbors; perhaps they need that much space for their extremely extensive toy soldier collection, or the 23 members of their extended family who live with them.  What troubles me is the thought that our future neighbors would probably prefer to be surrounded by other 6000+ square foot houses, not by the houses that are here, and that they will see the current residents of the street as recalcitrant people who need to get out as soon as possible so the street can be filled with giant houses like theirs, houses that don't have backyards and that are occupied by people like them, as opposed to those of us who actually live here.

I would be very happy to be wrong about this, I really would.  This is a great neighborhood.  There are families with children, there are retired people, and there are young single people, and even some students.  Kids ride their bikes in the street.  People walk their kids to school, chat in the street while walking the dogs, pick up each other's mail when someone's out of town, and really do help each other out when help is needed.  (I don't write about the best examples of helping out, because some things are private -- you'll just have to take my word for it.)  We'd love to have another good neighbor on the street, even if we weren't crazy about their house before we got to know them.  But just like no one asked us to approve the design of the house, we don't get to weigh in on who buys it, either.  So we'll have to take what we get, but we're hoping for the best.

In other news, the orange sign at the duplex has been replaced with a yellow sign, indicating that the tree removal plan has been approved by the city.  Another really big house to follow, I expect.  Stay tuned.

Another One Down

Angela's house is gone now and so are most of the trees.

I still think of the yellow house that used to be on the other side of Kathy and Steve's house as Angela's house, because Angela is person I knew best who lived there.  But it was vacant for a long time before the tree removal sign appeared in front of the house in February.

I went in the backyard in February and took pictures of the five trees that were marked with the fluorescent orange X's.

Last week, the house was demolished.  This was done while I was at work, so I didn't get any pictures of it, but I did get some pictures afterwards.  Here's one of them.

Later in the week, once the debris was mostly removed, the tree removal team came in and started taking out the trees.

I guess they didn't get done, on Friday; they left ropes on this one.  I assume it will come down today.

In other news, I heard from our neighbor Lee Anne that she and her husband had bought a house in Buckhead; they needed more space for a growing family, but were keeping their house on Wessyngton and were renting it out to a family that would be moving in soon.  I told her I had heard that, and wished them the best in their new neighborhood.  I'd seen the moving truck at their house a couple of weeks ago and asked her husband what was going on.  He told me they needed more space and were moving, and I asked if they had sold their house.  No, they were renting it out.  So find us some good neighbors, I told him.  He assured me that they had.

Here's hoping for the same for the house that will replace Angela's house.

Addendum:  Kathy shared some pictures of the demolition with me.

A Dog in the House

At my house, I am almost always the first one up in the morning.  For years, the morning routine was when I come downstairs, the first thing I would do was feed the dog -- our gentle, loving, loopy Labrador retriever.  So now, when I come downstairs in the dark, I still expect to hear his feet on the hardwood floor, his demands for food or water or being let outside or for attention, but it's quiet.  A few weeks ago, while Iain and I were both out of the country, Bullwinkle died.  He had cancer, and we all knew the time was coming.  Iain had a chance to say goodbye via Skype.  Since then we've talked a little about getting another dog, but it seems like it's too soon, like getting married again right after a divorce.

A couple weeks ago we had invited over some neighbors for dinner.  Scott was out of town, but Robyn came and Pawel and Carolina came too.  When Carolina emailed me to ask what they could bring, I cc:d Tom on my response, which was that they didn't need to bring anything, but if they wanted to bring something they could bring a bottle of wine.  To which Tom replied, "Also bring your dog.  Ours died this week and it will be nice to have a canine guest."  We'd gotten to know Lorenzo, Pawel and Carolina's golden retriever, at a recent block party.  So, fine.

That night we cooked pizza in the backyard pizza oven and traded stories.  It was a nice evening, and at some point Tom said to Pawel and Carolina, if you ever need someone to look after Lorenzo, let us know.  They looked surprised and replied, well, if you're serious about that, we're going to Savannah for the 4th of July.  Tom said he absolutely meant it and we'd be happy to look after Lorenzo.  I actually was a little annoyed that he made this offer with no consultation, given that I figured I would end up doing a good deal of the work over the holiday weekend, but it wasn't that big of a deal.  It couldn't be that much work to have Lorenzo underfoot, and as it turned out we were also feeding Karen and Elise's turtle while they were away, too.

Lorenzo came over on July 3, with his food (in single serving ziplock bags, since he's on a diet), his leash, his emergency contact information, and the essential commands in Spanish that we needed to use before entering the street, since Lorenzo has been trained to not enter the street except on command.  And sometime after that, something unexpected happened.  Everyone in the house -- everyone -- was happier, and we all fell totally in love with Lorenzo.

It wasn't just that he got excited when we returned home, greeting us with an unexpected display of joy (and once he even did it when he woke up and we hadn't gone anywhere; perhaps he dreamed that we'd gone away, so he was happy we were back), or that he'd knock things over to get a tennis ball that the kids would throw for him in the back yard or that he'd snooze at our feet; it was a reminder of what wonderful companions dogs are, how they can read our minds and give us what we need and just be there even when no one else is.

We took pictures.  Caroline's were the best; she posted lots of photos to Facebook and we sent some to Carolina and Pawel, who were having a good time on their vacation.  Here's one of mine:

Caroline's are better.  Here are a few:

This one had a caption, "an educated dog is never without a well-stocked library."

On Monday, Iain asked "when we have to give Lorenzo up."   I told him that Carolina and Pawel would be back on Wednesday.

Wednesday evening I was going out to dinner with an out-of-town colleague who was in Atlanta for a meeting.  I had promised long before that I would take her to my favorite Mexican restaurant that night.  I picked her up from the meeting and we stopped by the house on the way to Caramba (it really wasn't out of the way) so obstensibly so I could make sure Tom remembered I wouldn't be home for dinner but really because I wanted to say goodbye to Lorenzo.  No one but Lorenzo was home and we were greeted with his trademark happy dance.  I told him goodbye and that we'd enjoyed having him with us.  I know that he's a dog and he might not have understood a word I said (and anyway, I'm not sure he knows English) but I needed to say it anyway.

By the time I got back from dinner, Lorenzo had been picked up.  Iain said he put on an extraordinary display of joy when Pawel and Carolina arrived.  They brought us pralines and toffee from Savannah, and a very nice thank you note.  But really, the thanks should be to them.  It's great to have neighbors who -- when you really need one -- will loan you their dog.  

And also neighbors who will bring you your sweater that you left at Caramba.  Later that evening, there was a knock at the door.  It was our neighbor Marian, returning my sweater.

Without a Trace

The apartments at the corner of Wessyngton and Highland are long gone.  Here's the sequence.

This photo was taken last August, before the tenants were evicted.  There was a larger wood-frame structure on the corner, a long brick structure on the Wessyngton lot, and in between a small wood-frame building (attached to the larger one) that looked too small for someone to live in (but I'm pretty sure someone did).

By November, the buildings were empty and boarded up.

This photo - also from November - shows the sidewalk that extends from the corner down Wessyngton but does not extend all the way to the end of the second lot on Wessyngton.  Between the sidewalk and the street are the elm trees that were planted years ago by Trees Atlanta during a neighborhood tree-planting day.

By mid-May, when I took the pictures below, some of the erosion control fencing was in place and a large piece of equipment with a big shovel on the end was in place.  It was clear that demolition would begin soon.

On May 19, the demolition began.  That first day, the white frame structure was reduced to a large pile of rubble.

By the weekend, the corner lot was cleared off and leveled, and demolition of the brick building was well underway.  It looked like it had been bombed, without the fire.

Two weeks later, there was only a little rubble left from the brick building.  Mostly, there was a big hole.

By the following week, the rubble was pretty much gone, and all that was left of the brick building was the far wall, which was serving as a retaining wall for the property behind the lot.

The stairs remained at the corner lot, even though there no longer was anything at the top of them except for an empty lot.

A number of beautiful trees have been left.  With all the excavation around them, I don't know if they will survive, but it is encouraging that they aren't marked with fluorescent orange "X"'s and that there is no sign notifying neighbors that trees are about to be removed.

I was out of town the next week, but when I came back I was surprised to see a brand new sidewalk, extending the existing sidewalk along Wessyngton to the edge of the property.

Between kids being home and travel for work, I have not had time to attend any of the neighborhood meetings where I might have learned what is planned for the site.  We do know that the two lots have been or will be subdivided into three -- the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the City has to subdivide the property -- and that it will remain zoned for single-family homes.  But we don't know what will be built.

Myself, I'm not so worried about what the houses look like.  I'm more concerned about who will buy the houses and be our neighbors.  I'm hoping for the kind of neighbors who will pick up your mail or or newspaper if you are out of town for a few days and maybe even feed your cat and definitely call 911 if guys in an unmarked truck show up and start loading up your stuff.  

But of course that's still some ways away.  In the meantime, I'll take it as a good sign that there's a new sidewalk and pretty effective erosion control measures in place.  We'll see what happens.