The city's Landmarks Preservation Board designated the Treat House at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and West Highland Drive as a historic landmark. The June 7 vote was unanimous, said preservation-board spokes-woman Beth Chave.
It was a decision welcomed by the Queen Anne Historical Society, which was stung by the demolition last year of the historic Black Mansion just up the street on West Highland.
"What is really a landmark house was, in fact, preserved," said John Hennes, historical society president. "It is satisfying because it is a more significant house than the Black Mansion was."
But the owners of what is now an apartment house were deeply disappointed by the ruling, said Art Skolnik, one of the state's first historic-reservation officers and someone who ironically argued against the landmark designation for the Treat House. "We feel the historical designation was inaccurate and didn't accurately address the building's integrity," he said.
The landmarks board used two criteria in the designation. One was that the original home was associated in a significant way with the life of a person important in the history of the city.
The other was that the building is an easily identifiable visual feature of Queen Anne and contributes to the distinctive quality or identity of the neighborhood.
That may be so, but Skolnik argues that neither of what he termed "podunk criteria" addressed the archi-tecture of the building. "Ninety percent of the exterior, it's all been changed," he said. The original shingles were replaced around 50 years ago with "the cheapest brick they could find," Skolnik said.
"Well, buildings change over time," said Mimi Sheridan, who prepared the Treat House nomination report for the Queen Anne Historical Society. That just reflects the changes in use and history of a house, she said. "And those can be significant."
Skolnik doesn't buy the argument. The underlying issue behind the nomination and designation for historic status was stopping further development, he said. And the landmarks board came up with the least controversial criteria to do that, Skolnik charged.
The next steps in the process are negotiations over controls and incentives and a designating ordinance. Controls and incentives identify the features of a landmark that need to be preserved, but it is still possible for owners to get permission to demolish a building, Chave admitted. "Of course, that's not an easy process," she said.
Difficult or not, demolition is the only step that makes financial sense for the Treat House, according to Skolnik. "That building is rotten to the core."
The owners of the building are not interested in trying to save it in any case, he said. "We've notified them that we're not interested in negotiating controls and incentives."
Sheridan thinks the Treat House can be saved. "It can converted to condos," she said. But Skolnik dismisses that idea because, he said, the owners would have to charge around $1.5 million per condo, which would be an extremely hard sell because there is no parking at the building. "As far as we're concerned, if there was an economic viability, the owner would have looked at it."
In the meantime, the owner has several people who want to buy the property, tear down the old building and build something new there, Skolnik said.
That's all on hold for the moment, which brings up the issue of property rights, he said. As it stands now, the historical designation is "an unjust taking" that penalizes the owners, according to Skolnik.
The owners have vowed not to give up, he added. "Depending on what happens there [at the landmarks board], we will appeal to a hearing examiner," Skolnik said. "We're in it for the long haul."
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
[[In-content Ad]]
