A Burkeville property owner whose 1940s duplex burned down three years ago can’t rebuild the same building even though he was fully insured.
George Francis owned a duplex on Wellington Crescent, built by Boeing in the 1940s, that straddled two lots.
But the two lots are zoned for single-family homes, and rezoning them to allow a duplex requires significant utility upgrades, which would cost Francis thousands of dollars.
Francis could build a house on each lot without rezoning, but he doesn’t want a larger footprint on the property, he just wants to rebuild what was there.
There is extensive shrubbery and trees around the property that he also wants to retain.
“Two houses take a lot more room than a duplex and also sacrifices more than a 1,000 square feet of greenspace, destroys all my ornamental hedge and all my vegetation that I’ve spent 50 years doing – gone out the window,” he said.
About a half a dozen such duplexes were built in Burkeville in the 1940s, straddling two properties, and by today’s standards are considered “non-conforming.”
Cary Combs, owner of Cartessa Construction, who’s been working with Francis on this project, has torn down two of these duplexes in Burkeville and built two single-family homes on them.
Entering a rezoning process is more complex than just building what a property is already zoned for, Combs said, and that adds cost to the project.
In the end, the property with two single family homes with secondary suites would have the same number of households as a duplex with two suites on both sides, which is what Francis wants to build.
Francis said the amount of work he’s being asked to do, including sewer and water upgrades, to rebuild what was already there is equivalent to what large developers have to do when they build hundreds of units of housing.
“I’m not in that league — I’m not even in the minor leagues,” Francis said.
If a house partially burns down, it can be rebuilt even if the zoning has changed, explained city spokesperson Clay Adams. But if a building is completely destroyed, like Francis’ duplex is, the new building has to conform to today’s zoning, he added.
Before starting on this project, Francis canvassed the nearby houses and his idea of rebuilding a duplex was supported by his neighbours.
When he set to work, he had to have a surveyor, an arborist, a technician, an architect and management company work on the project, which cost him about $40,000 all told.
It was after all this work and expense, he said, that he was thrown a “curve ball,” being informed by the city that he couldn’t rebuild the duplex without rezoning the property and upgrading the utilities.
The demands from the city could cost him up to $100,000 even before a shovel is turned in the ground, Francis explained.
When Francis settled with the insurance company, he was paid the value of the duplex but this didn’t include upgrades to the property.
