A small ranch-style house at 803 Largent Street is back before McKinney's Historic Preservation Advisory Board on Thursday, Nov. 5, two months after members put off a decision on whether it can be torn down.
The owner is asking for a certificate of appropriateness to demolish the house, which city staff date to about 1950 and which the city's 2023 historic resources survey rated a medium-priority property.
When the request first came up Sept. 3, staff recommended against it, saying demolition would fail four of the Secretary of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation, including the principle that deteriorated historic features should be repaired rather than replaced. The board tabled the case.
What the board asked for
According to an addendum the owner filed for Thursday's meeting, the board wanted evidence of a real effort to save the building: several bids showing how it could be rehabilitated, how much would have to be rebuilt to make it structurally sound, how much original material could be kept, and why the owner still preferred demolition after weighing the options.
The owner's answer is a cost comparison.
A foundation company that got under the house through two new openings in the floor concluded that every beam, joist and rim joist would need replacing before a new subfloor could go in, the addendum says, consistent with an April engineering report that called the pier-and-beam system largely rotted and the center living and dining area collapsed by several inches.
Testing found lead-based paint on the exterior wood, much of it sealed beneath vinyl siding that would have to be removed or replaced to deal with it. A home and wood-destroying insect inspection found termite damage and an active infestation.
Putting it together, the owner estimates rehabilitation at about $403,000, which the filing says is more than $100,000, or 35%, above the cost of building a new house of similar size and style.
Using six recent sales of remodeled two-bedroom homes in the historic district, which averaged about $361,000, the owner backs out land values from the county appraisal district and puts the value of the houses themselves at about $150,000.
The filing includes early plans for a replacement: a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath ranch-style house with a second story, horizontal wood siding and more than 320 square feet of covered porch. It notes those plans are not final and have not been submitted to the city.
