Opinion, Editorial, in the Daily Gazette, August 8, 2012
In December 2008, four month after he bought the Winans-Crippen House in his City’s Franklin Square Historic District, Saratoga Springs real estate developer Joseph Boff decided that it wouldn’t be economically feasible to restore the house and applied for permission to tear it down. Nearly four years later, he’s still arguing for the right to do so, but his case isn’t any more compelling now than it was then.
The house is dilapidated and unfit for habitation, but it was when he bought the place – and if he didn’t know it, he certainly should have. He also knew, or should have, that it was an important part of a historic neighborhood, and demolishing it would result in “the irreversible loss of a cultural/historic resource.” (as his recent draft Environmental Impact Statement acknowledges.)
Boff may indeed have a hardship – he claims it would cost more than $2.5 million to rehab the house, which would then have a market value of no more than $800,000 – but it is clearly a self-inflicted one.
The structure at 66 Franklin St. may not be habitable in it current state, but it has not been structurally condemned. If Boff, who coincidentally owns the adjacent vacant lot, doesn’t want to spend what it would take to restore it, he should sell it. That the cost of rehabbing it would greatly exceed its market value is hardly unusual for a home of that vintage – and no reason for the Design Review Commission to grant him relief.