My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

Alright, I know that the popular time to look back at the past year and to the future is in early January. But I say better late than never, or that I am not very popular, or that I don’t do anything when I am supposed to. Or I can simply say I have been thinking about this post since early January!

Anyway, 2009 was a pretty wild year, as it was for most people. With the downfall of the economy, and the subsequent collapse of the construction industry, my business (and others in my field) took a huge hit. Beginning in late 2008 and into 2009, I was forced to restructure the entire company and let go all of my full time regular employees, all of which who had been with me for years. That was a very hard thing to do, but it had to be done. Shortly thereafter, we had to abandon our downtown office location since we could no longer afford the rent. Fortunately, with those changes, and the work we did have, we were able to stay afloat.

We also sold our home last year. We were planning on doing it anyway, but moved the time table up about a year. In one of the worst housing markets in recent memory, we were able to get it under contract in 2 months. It didn’t go smoothly, but we were able to get it closed. I blogged about that earlier in the year. So in the end, within a six month period, we moved both our office, and our home. In both cases, we had been in place for 9 years, and in that time, we accumulated a lot of stuff! It is fair to say, we did a lot of downsizing. While it was hard to do, it was also a good thing. There were other ups and downs. We both had extended family issues to deal with as well, so we spent the last half of the year recovering from all that.

Looking forward to 2010, I am fairly optimistic. Business is starting to show some signs of life, and I take comfort in the fact that while the economy is no where close to great shape, the worst is behind us, and we can look forward to better days sooner than later. We are also making plans to build a new energy efficient home. This will be located in Midori in Northwest Fort Collins. We are also looking at the possibility of moving an older historic home. We are also moving ahead with the Midori development with my business partner, and we are getting some renewed interest in it again. I am also formulating plans for migrating my career focus over time and am talking to potential investors on that one. In January, I was also elected as chair of the Fort Collins Landmark Preservation Commission.

By the way, I do plan on blogging about our adventures in building our house. This is not entirely new to us, as I used to be part owner Wildflower Homes, and will likely be building a few homes in Midori as well. We are just beginning the design phase for our home, and will share ideas as we go.

Finally, the owner of one of the other blogs I follow posted that she was going to leave the area, and would be closing down the blog. It is a great blog about historical tidbits of Fort Collins, so I volunteered to take it over. The owner of the blog graciously agreed, so as of this week I have that one too. I do plan on keeping both blogs separate, but there could be some cross posting. Be sure to check it out, Lost Fort Collins.

The last half of last week I spent at the Savings Places Conference in Denver. This is an annual conference put on by Colorado Preservation Inc. regarding historic preservation issues. It is one of the largest conferences of its kind, and attracts people from all across the country. Having been to this conference for two years running now, and having attended many other conferences over the years, I can say that this conference is very well organized and is an excellent conference overall. It runs on schedule, all the speakers are engaging and good. I have been at other conferences where speakers will literally bore you to sleep, or the conference runs way behind schedule, or both. The only irony to this one, is that it has grown so much that this year it was held in the brand new Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver. In the past it was held in the historic El Jebel facility, a gorgeous facility. It has simply outgrown that place. Not that I am complaining, the Hyatt is a great place to hold a conference.

The theme for this years conference was about sustainability and how historic preservation fits into that. After all, there is no greener building than one that is already built. I attended several excellent presentations on how to retrofit old buildings with green products, insulation possibilities, and I learned a lot about how to repair brick and stone work. I also attended one interesting presentation on historic bridges. Part of the presentation was on the program that the State of Nebraska is doing to identify old historic bridges, and ways to save/ reuse them. Another portion was on the City of Fruita, and how they were able to save the old CO 340 bridge across the Colorado River, get it stabilized, and get it ready for use as a pedestrian and bike bridge. This is unique, in that it is one of the last Trestle bridges around. It is also a little dear to my heart, as 20 years ago when I was preparing a routing plan for the Colorado River Trail, I identified this bridge as a good candidate for a pedestrian and bike bridge across the river.

Last but not least, was the presentation of this years endangered places. This is a list of places that get nominated to bring attention to properties and structures that in danger of being lost. Mostly this brings attention to those needing some help. Over the years, 80 places have been nominated, 17 have been totally saved, 3 lost (one of these was Currigan Hall in Denver, which was not historic anyway), with the rest somewhere in between. This years list included:

1) Grand Junction Train Depot (this one is special to me, as I spent a lot of time at this depot when I was a kid, and it is a gorgeous building)

2) Colorado State Capitol Dome (this one is ironic in that it is a state building, but no funds to repair it)

3) Brown Sheep Camp, Fort Carson (used to be one of the largest sheep ranches in the country. Army owns it now)

4) Elkhorn Lodge, Estes Park

5) Outbuildings of Lake City

6) Willowcroft Manor and Farm, Columbine Valley (outside of Littleton)

For more information, check out Colorado Preservation, Inc.

Today it was announced that Fort Collins has been designated as one of twelve distinctive designations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This is quite an honor, and is a distinction that is highly competitive to obtain. The award is given to those cities and towns that offer an authentic visitor experience by providing dynamic downtowns, cultural diversity, attractive architecture, sustainability and revitalization. The other towns and cities that have been selected are Bastrop, Texas, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, The Crooked Road, Virginia (what a fun name!), Huntsvills, Alabama, Marquette, Michigan, Provincetown, Massachusetts, Rockland Maine, Simsbury, Connecticut, Sitka, Alaska, and St. Louis, Missouri.

Now comes the fun part, you can vote for your favorite town or city, and you can vote as many times as you want! The more votes Fort Collins gets, the more recognition! Simply click on this link to the Trust for Historic Preservation, and vote away!

As reported by the Earth Policy Institute, The number of cars owned by Americans actually shrunk last year by 4 million cars, or about 2%. This is rather notable in that it is one of the few, if only time, it has happened. At the same time, ridership on public transportation has climbed 9 percent from 2005 to 2008. One year hardly makes a trend, but is it possible the american love affair with the car is coming to an end? Or is this simply a result of the current economic slump? Perhaps somewhere in between. I know of several people, living in more urban areas than Fort Collins who manage to survive quit nicely without a car. My friend Amy in Oakland is one. She doesn’t own a car, and relies mostly on public transportation, which is excellent in the bay area. She also belongs to a car share service, so if she needs a car for a particular reason she can get one at a reasonable cost.

We shall see where this trend goes. With Americans focus on scaling back and simplifying, this trend could be here to stay.

Berkeley neighborhoods, esp. those around the UC Berkeley campus are rather quirky. For one thing, they are built on steep hillside, so you will find lots of curvy narrow streets, which has to be a nightmare for the fire fighters. We wandered around the western portions of Berkeley Hills, immediately north of the campus. One of the things we liked about this neighborhood were all the staircases. The streets here are steep and narrow, but in many areas, there are staircases built for pedestrians to rapidly gain altitude, and not have to wander about with the streets. Talk about pedestrian connectivity. Of course, built at the turn of the last century, it is hardly handicap accessible. We also found many sidewalk connections that provided shortcuts between streets and different neighborhoods. Pretty cool, you can see why planners now push these connections on developers now. I always did think it was a good idea, in spite of the NYMBY’ers.

An example of one of the staircases.

Another thing I was really impressed with the area, was how the homes were large, and very expensive, but not pretentious. They are built into the landscape, and don’t overwhelm it. Of course, it helps that the landscape in CA grows quickly. Below are a few photos of what we found.

This one, while not really in the Hill neighborhood was really cool. I liked how it actually addressed the corner lot it is on, and the second floor balcony.

There are entry gates like this all over.

A grape vine is taking over this fence.

This is a rare brick home in the area.

This is a really cool, and huge Agave!

While not rare in these parts, still a huge Redwood.

I really like how this house, though huge, is not imposing and fits into the landscape. McMansions could take a lesson.

A cool hillside house. Notice the garage built into the retaining wall.

This one is for you Lalie.

Just a cool house, cool yard, and cool artwork.

To see more pictures, check out my Picassa Album here.