IF UNIVERSITY OF Arizona officials have their way, 66-year-old Bill Kennedy could soon see the house he was born in demolished by the wrecking ball. But for his sacrifice, the UA will pick up an extra 36 parking spaces.
"My grandmother lived here, my father and mother lived here, I've lived here, my wife has lived here, my two children were here every summer for 20 years," Kennedy says. "I have a lot in this house. It's my family's roots. I am devastated by what they're doing."
Kennedy lives with his wife at 835 E. Sixth Street, near the corner of Sixth and Tyndall Avenue. His off-campus bungalow is one of eight homes in a row between Euclid and Park avenues. The university, which owns half the homes, has announced plans to knock down seven of the eight this fall to create a parking lot for the planned Environmental and Natural Resources Building.
The university is going ahead with the plan in spite of protest
from the West University Neighborhood Association, which would
like to see the homes preserved. Next month, UA officials plan
to ask the Arizona Board of Regents for permission to begin condemnation
proceedings against the few private owners left along the strip
who are unwilling to sell their homes.
John Patterson, a member of the West University Neighborhood Association, complains the university has a very viable alternative: Keep all eight houses along Sixth Street and create new spaces by closing off Tyndall Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets. This option would create 187 new spaces, just 36 less than the 223 the UA plans to build.
Patterson estimates the university will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $331,000 to buy the additional houses. Toss on the court costs of condemnation proceedings, relocation expenses, demolition, staff time and construction costs and you could be talking a half-million dollars for those extra 36 spaces--which comes out to about $13,000 apiece.
Still, it's worth it to the university, says Bruce Wright, UA senior officer for economic development and community affairs, who calls leveling historic homes for a parking lot "one of those difficult issues we have to deal with."
He says the houses would need expensive renovations and university officials have discovered that retooled homes aren't very useful as offices. In addition, the UA is trying to find ways to prevent faculty and students from parking in nearby neighborhoods.
"We've looked at a variety of different options of how we could move forward with that parking lot and we've tried to be really sensitive and we've explored all those options in great depth," Wright says. The university has been planning to acquire the property along Sixth Street since 1988, when it laid out its comprehensive campus plan. The university even offered to deed the houses to the city and help move them across the street if the city would pick up part of the tab. The city council, still stinging from criticism over the cost of relocating a row of houses along Speedway west of Euclid Avenue, declined to participate in that project, according to Wright.
"After exploring various options and making a proposal to
the city, we've determined that the best option all around is
to take the structures down and build a parking lot there,"
Wright says.
Patterson says WUNA is ready to use its political muscle to fight the university's plan to spend taxpayer dollars to demolish historic homes. He's especially appalled by the fact that one house, which belongs to the Contreras family, will not be demolished, but will instead be surrounded by a sea of asphalt. Because the owner has lived there since 1967, the university will not try to take the property through an eminent domain action.
"If Mrs. Contreras chooses to continue living there under the grandfathered property rights, that's her choice," Wright says. "I think it'd be better with everybody if she'd agree to sell her property to us. I would suggest that it's not going to be the best situation to have parking nearly on all sides of your house. We wish that was not the case."
Kennedy is upset that the Contreras family, which has owned the house for about a quarter of a century, will be able to stay, while his home will be demolished.
"I've only owned it since '93, but I was born in this house," Kennedy says. "My father acquired the land in 1918 as a returning soldier from World War I. In 1919 he had the house built."
Kennedy left Tucson to pursue a career as a geologist in the oil industry, but often returned to visit. He came back for good in the 1980s to care for his ailing mother, who died in 1993.
"My name was not on the property until mother passed on," Kennedy says. "Now they're claiming I have no rights to the property, as if I just purchased it in 1993. They're denying any rights from being born here. The Kennedys have owned this property and are the only people who have lived here continuously for 66 years."
Wright says Kennedy just doesn't have a case.
"When the house changed ownership, then the people who were taking the new ownership were aware that the university intended to acquire the property," he says. "It was a matter of fairness and trying to be sensitive to those people who had owned the property before the establishment of the boundaries."
While Kennedy is hopeful the Board of Regents will stop the university from taking his property, he's also talking with a lawyer to see if he has any legal recourse. He's heartbroken that the university plans to destroy his home.
"They take a recent comer like Contreras and honor that," he says, "and although I was born here and maintained a residence here for 66 years, they say, 'Go to hell.' "
