On January 12, you filed for a demolition permit for 1525 SE 35th Place, a simple 2-story farmhouse a few steps from SE Hawthorne. It was possibly the first house built on this street, then called Marguerite Avenue, and has since housed Portlanders for 127 years.  Built in 1888 by the Henry F. Padgham family, this home housed notable Padghams for several decades, particularly young Henry Jr. Currently the house serves as part of Portland's essential but ever-dwindling supply of affordable rental housing.  Many young people starting out in life have called this house home through the decades as it has been rented to groups of housemates. The affordability and historic nature of this home and homes like it have fed the indie, artistic culture that today makes the Hawthorne District a desirable and thriving locale.  

You plan to replace it with two ultramodern attached rowhouses with only two bedrooms apiece that will sell for more than $600,000 each (more than $1.2 million total), having purchased the home for $220,000.  Needless to say, this is not a net increase in density, and is an astounding loss of affordability.  Your plan to demolish the house will strip this historic neighborhood of a crucial element of its physical connection to the past. The average age of both the commercial buildings next door on Hawthorne and the residences that line this street is a century old.  Classic style defines what exists in the neighborhood today, and your plans will amount to an architectural bomb disrupting a consistently historic street.

Fortunately, you need not destroy the existing home to add more housing to the lot.  You could simply maintain and repair the existing home, and add an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU).  The home has had recent interior repairs and upgrades.  Its exterior needs further repairs and upgrades, but it is far from a teardown.  Fixing the exterior and shoring up the foundation would be well worth the investment, as it has already proven itself a solidly built structure that would house Portlanders for generations to come.  Portland allows for ADUs that are up to 80% of the size of the home.  Further, homeowners here are not required to live on the same property with the ADU, making it even easier to build more ADU housing while keeping the main home as rental housing.  In an effort to stimulate building of more ADUs, the City of Portland is not charging any System Development Fees for ADUs through at least July 2016.  While costs vary, this lowers the total price around 10%.  City officials understand that we need additional rental housing, and we don't need unnecessary costs added that would make it less affordable.  What this neighborhood does not need more of are two-bedroom rowhouses that cost more than a half a million dollars.  

The bad news doesn't end with the loss of this home, however.  You also recently received approval to split the lots at 623 and 633 NE Thompson Street, which are Victorian homes 126 and 125 years old, respectively.  These homes, too, are filled with housemates, and could, too, house so many more generations of Portlanders.  623 was commissioned in 1889 by famed businessman Louis Nicolai, who among many other pursuits built the Merchant Hotel Block in Old Town.  It was then purchased by Major William Reidt, a powerful real estate magnate and beloved citizen who was known as the "Father of Third Oregon."  This house gave his enormous real estate career one of its first boosts, as historians indicate Reidt lived down the block and first embarked upon his real estate career in 1889.  633 was built in 1890 by inventor Bates Edward Hawley, a son of the influential Oregon pioneer Hawley families' branches.  Three years later it was purchased by a Swedish immigrant named Charles S. Rudeen, who would own the home for 24 years.  Rudeen eventually became Chairman of the Multnomah County Commissioners.

At least as devastating as the loss of homes is the loss of large and healthy trees, many of which are over 50 feet tall and approaching 100 years old.  However, once more, there is already ample space to build much more housing without demolishing a single house or taking a chainsaw to a single tree.  To the immediate west of the 623 house is flat grassy lawn, primed and ready to be built upon. The trees are in the northwest corner, away from the construction area.  The likewise grassy lawn space with laurel bushes behind 633 that faces NE 7th Avenue would easily accommodate a large new structure, whether rowhouses or flats.  There is even adequate width in between the two houses to build a skinny house.  No additional driveways would need to be cut into the curbs because the two existing driveways at each end could be shared easements, meaning no loss of the currently available street parking.

The plans you have filed show that you will build ultramodern rowhouses that are nearly identical to the ones planned at 1525 SE 35th Pl. This parcel is large, and after removing both existing houses, you only plan to build eight two-bedroom rowhouses, the bare minimum density possible. You could build a total of as many as 14 housing units under current zoning while preserving the historic homes and trees. In other words, you are destroying a lot for very little gain, especially when it is possible to destroy nothing and still add a much greater amount of housing.

Change your plans and save your houses, please, Guy Bryant - be good to the city that has been so good to you. Save these three homes and the trees from destruction. Choose an alternate development plan, or sell to someone who will. Our city is suffering right now. We're suffering from a lack of affordable housing, as legions of us are priced out of the city, and we're suffering from the needless destruction of the affordable old homes in our neighborhoods.