Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Technically we’ve got enough demolition projects that this will in fact be a teardown kind of Tuesday, but none of the jobs are particularly interesting. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.
There is one slightly interesting things about the four demolition permits issued last week, in the sense that there was a kind of pattern to them.
Not a real pattern mind you, more of a “Patternicity” type deal. If you’re as unfamiliar with the words as I was before writing today’s column, it’s defined as a “tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.” I didn’t know there was a term (there’s several) for this phenomenon before now, so God bless the Internet.
If you’re curious, officially — by Wikipedia standards, so take that as you will — it’s called Apophenia.
That’s a lot of build up for how small change and minor this pattern was: three duplex demos and one triplex demo. OK — it would be better if there were two triplexes; it would fit more into my imaginary pattern. But three two (units)s and a three (unit) is still kind of cool. Plus, there’s only three owners for these four projects, so that’s another three. Three threes total. 3×3=9. Add up the numbers in the current year and what do you get? That’s right.
Alright, I’m starting to feel like Jim Carrey in that Number 23 movie, which means I should probably ease off so I can go back to feeling like Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
So let’s dig into these demos a little bit. The first one on my list is also probably the ugliest: a squat little duplex at 615 E Lenoir Street. Built in 1950, this 1,189 square-foot, one-story cinder block structure is undeniably hideous. Just look at it. The sentimentalist in me always feels a bit bad writing about someone’s former home being torn down, but with places like this (it’s made of cinder block!), good riddance. No wonder Telegraph Road Properties, which bought it less than two months ago, is already tearing it down!
Wake County
615 E. Lenoir. Yuck!
The $6,000 demolition will be handled by James Taylor Construction. If their slogan isn’t something along the lines of “You’ve got a friend in James Taylor Construction” they need to fire their marketing guy.
Next up is another midcentury single-story duplex at 3002 Lewis Farm Road built in 1956 that was mercifully made from actual bricks. It really just looks like any other ranch house you might see around town, really. It was acquired last month by Two Apples Properties. The $8,500 demolition will be handled by Steve Sypher Designs.
Wake County
3002 Lewis Farm Road
The last two projects are for adjacent homes in a neighborhood located a little ways north of Wade Avenue and between Glenwood and Capital. Located at 1702 Bickett Boulevard and 109 E Aycock Street and both built in the 1950s these homes were both acquired last year by Jade Park LLC.
Wake County
109 East Aycock Street
According to a site plan filed in July 2015, Jade Park LLC is planning to create the Jade Park Subdivision, a five-home community comprised of three-bedroom units. The developer for the subdivision is Revolution Homes, which also developed the North Hills subdivision in north — or is it Midtown? — Raleigh.
City of Raleigh
Site plan drawings for Jade Park
Not surprisingly, Revolution Homes is listed as the general contractor for both of these $20,000 demolitions. Although the permits list them each at $20k, I’d imagine that’s the overall price for the demolition of both homes. They’re not significantly bigger than the other houses being torn down this week, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that they would cost more than twice as much each.
