Blog Williamsburg

Wood Siding: Preserve or Remove?

This is a letter I drafted to send to City Council. I never sent the letter but I used the content in an open forum before Council. The letter is a compilation of my work and several others.

Dear Madam Mayor and Council Members:

Two applications currently before the Architectural Review Board have a direct bearing on a concern expressed by many City residents. While these cases deal specifically with an exterior change requested by the owners, the Board concluded during deliberations that they bring up issues beyond the Board’s ability to affect change. This letter is to request the help of City Council. We believe that with the support we propose below, the Board can be an effective tool to help the City deal with this issue.

We are fortunate to have some beautiful older neighborhoods here in Williamsburg. Members of the Planning Commission have told the Board that citizens have come forward again and again during the Comprehensive Plan Review to say that they want to live in these neighborhoods because they have a charm and grace that makes them very desirable as places to call home.

Yet residents share a prevailing concern that these neighborhoods stand at a crossroads. Land values in the City are soaring. Meanwhile, many of its homes are older and in need of repair and substantial and expensive renovations if they are to be brought up to today’s standards. A good number of them are being bought as investment property and are not being renovated or even maintained well. Consequently, rather than becoming a place people want to make their home, these neighborhoods may well become places only for investment.

The purpose of this letter is to ask City Council to explore ways to shift the trend away from investment property toward owner-occupied homes. The cases before the Board described below bring up some important issues that deal specifically with how this might happen.

The decision to invest in major renovations costing $100,000, $200,000 and more is a difficult one. Although living in downtown Williamsburg is desirable, newer, bigger and cheaper homes more geared to today’s lifestyles are only a few miles away. The average per square foot cost of renovations is considerably higher than new construction. Combine this with the reality that land prices outside the City is considerably lower, and one can get substantially more per dollar spent by building a new home outside the City than by renovating an older home within the City.

Undertaking renovations carries an inherent financial risk. Should the surrounding neighborhood subsequently decline - due to poorly-maintained rentals or non-residential encroachment - much of the renovation costs could be lost as the value of the building does not substantially appreciate.

In contrast, converting an in-City house into rental property and not undertaking substantial renovations makes financial sense with much less risk. Rentals generate considerable cash flow (especially if the number of renters per house is allowed to increase), generate depreciation for tax purposes, and hold the prospect of capital gains, while being little affected by the condition of the building itself or of the surrounding neighborhood.

So why would someone choose to renovate one of these older houses and make it their home, rather than foregoing the renovations and renting it out? Despite the risks just mentioned, it does happen. More to the point, perhaps, is the question what can we as a community do to encourage more people to do it?

The answer lies in working together to remove as many of the risks as we can. Major renovations to owner-occupied homes will simply not take place unless homeowners are very confident that Williamsburg will remain a highly attractive place to settle and that its neighborhoods will retain their special character.

The two cases before the ARB request exceptions to the Guidelines for replacing existing wood siding with synthetic siding within Architectural Preservation Districts (APDs). The first, at 505 Capitol Landing Road, is the replacement of beaded wood siding with Hardiplank. The second, at 114 Griffin Avenue, is the replacement of cedar shingle siding with Nailite polypropylene siding panels, which are cast to have the appearance of cedar shingles. The rationale in both cases is less maintenance and longer durability. In the case of Hardiplank, it is also non-flammable. Both materials are termite resistant.

However, the Guidelines for wood sided homes require that replacement siding must also be of the original materials, i.e. wood.

In the eyes of many homeowners, the synthetic material’s advantages are more compelling than the maintenance of the wood siding. Builders report that synthetics are specified with increasing frequency. The principal owner of Custom Building Supplies and a major local builder, Joel Sheppard, reported that approximately 60% of his siding and trim material inventory is synthetic in response to the current market. 

It seems to us that these two cases are fundamentally different. The Griffin Avenue home is surrounded by predominantly brick and/or wood sided houses. It is very near the Colonial Williamsburg Historic District and Chandler Court, which has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Allowing this property owner to change to synthetic siding could have a negative impact on the surrounding properties. Just as one damaged piece in an antique furniture set brings down the value of the entire set, so too would this change affect the entire neighborhood. The decision in this case is abundantly clear as was demonstrated by a unanimous vote of the Board: Replacement with synthetic siding is not acceptable.

The Capitol Landing Road case is not as clear. This home is of a similar vintage as the Griffin Avenue home. However, the homes around it are very different. Mr. Hart, the owner, pointed out that all the houses around his are covered in low-grade synthetic materials. He argued that Hardiplank siding, while admittedly not original to the building, would still be a great improvement over the appearance of other houses around him. Whether his home is sided with wood, Hardiplank or vinyl will have no effect on the value of his home or the value of surrounding homes. It could in fact be argued that synthetic siding might increase his home’s value since it would have lower maintenance costs over time. This uncertainty about what is best on this property was, we believe, reflected in the Board’s split decision, 6 to 2 in favor of maintaining the original wood siding.

At the heart of our concern with these two applications lies the question:  Why is the wood-sided homeowner, in effect, penalized with higher costs for materials and maintenance, especially when he is in the minority?

In some APD areas, less than 50% of the houses are sided with the original wood or brick; the remainders have synthetic materials that include vinyl, aluminum, asbestos shingles, and Hardiplank siding. In these cases of wood sided homes, the homeowner could feel he is held hostage by the Guidelines while many of his neighbors can enjoy the reduced cost and easier maintenance afforded by the synthetic materials.

However, these synthetic substitutes just do not look like the real thing, especially in the case of Hardiplank’s beaded siding. The profiles are different; the way they reflect the light is different. Most importantly, our concern goes beyond the aesthetics to the very heart of what an Architectural Preservation District is intended to achieve.

We believe that a neighborhood filled with beautifully preserved older homes is very valuable — to both the community as a whole and the individual homeowner. However, it must be the entire neighborhood that is preserved and not just a few homes mixed in to an otherwise poorly maintained area.

Without the benefit of a plan to turnaround the eroded appearance of homes that do not uphold our standards, we will be needlessly penalizing homeowners in the minority as represented by Mr. Hart’s application. These owners will have to expend more money and effort than their neighbors to maintain their homes, while not having a positive influence on their own or surrounding property values. However, with a plan of incentives that fosters the return of our architectural standards to all homes, the denial of these two recent applications will be part of a greater effort to benefit the entire City, including the two recent applicants, with more attractive, valuable neighborhoods.

Therefore, we propose that City Council look into incentives that will encourage property owners to remove the siding and restore the original painted wood.

The Architectural Review Board agrees that architectural preservation should be taken literally. The members support the goal of preserving the homes in the APDs as they originally appeared, using original materials, as opposed to preserving the homes with synthetic siding that was put on years after the original construction. The City Council’s unanimous support to uphold the Board’s decision to preserve the wood siding on the Bruton Parish Rectory suggests the Council’s support.

We request that the City Council look beyond the specific problem presented by these two applications towards the greater issue of returning our neighborhoods to the high standards we envision for our city. Specifically, the Board members believe that the entire City would benefit from incentives that encourage homeowners in the APD’s to replace all forms of non-brick siding with wood. Attached is an incentive program description from Newport News, which might be adapted for such a purpose. We hope a study of the larger issue behind the wood and brick guideline will reveal solutions to ease the concerns of many of our citizens. With this support from the City Council, we believe the ARB can work to reverse the erosion of the appearance of our neighborhoods.

In this regard, the Board has disapproved the two applications described above after careful consideration, as they are not in accord with the existing Guidelines.

Thank you for your consideration of our proposal.

Sincerely yours,

Joe Hertzler

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