County offers incentive
to move and reuse houses
By GREG
MOORE
Express Staff Writer
As an incentive
to reuse unwanted buildings, Blaine County has halved its permit fee for
installing moved structures. However, a local house mover said further breaks on
fees and code requirements could prompt even more reuse, saving natural
resources and providing more affordable housing.
With the Wood
River Valley’s skyrocketing land values and wealthy buyers, perfectly good
houses—even very nice houses—are often slated to be torn down.
House mover Doug
Niedrich said he knows of two houses, of between 3,000 and 4,000 square feet,
that were demolished in Gimlet this year, and a third in Elkhorn. He said he was
unable to rescue them in time.
"It’s a
tremendous waste," he said.
Since 1999, 20
houses have been donated to the Wood River Land Trust’s Building Materials
Thrift Store. Store manager Bruce Tidwell said that though many were not
practical for reuse, six were moved and are being lived in.
A beautiful log
house in Hulen Meadows, donated to the Land Trust, was auctioned off last month
via sealed bids received from eight people. It is scheduled to be cut into three
pieces next week and moved to an undisclosed location.
As part of the
county’s adoption of the 2000 International Building Code, the county
commissioners unanimously voted during a meeting Monday to base permit fees for
moved buildings on only 50 percent of the building’s value plus the full value
of any new construction involved.
"It would be
more incentive to move a building if the fee was based only on the work to be
done," Niedrich told the commissioners.
Niedrich’s
comments were supported by Commissioner Sarah Michael, who said the county
should try to save as many buildings as possible.
In a later
interview, Niedrich said he has moved 25 houses since 1988, six of them this
year.
"It’s
getting more and more difficult to find a place that will let you move a house
there," he said, pointing out that almost all subdivisions in Blaine County
prohibit moved houses.
"There’s
an old-school mentality that a moved structure is a trailer," he said.
"The county, I’m happy to say, is working with us."
However, Niedrich
said, he would like to see further reductions in permit fees and more lenient
treatment of electrical and snow-load codes. Moved houses must be brought up to
the same code requirements placed on new construction. Niedrich said that can be
prohibitively expensive when interior walls must be torn out to rewire, and
exterior walls strengthened for heavier snow loads.
In an interview,
county Building Inspector Bill Dyer said his department typically puts as much
work into reviewing plans and carrying out inspections for moved structures as
it does for new ones. However, the revenue the county collects from building
permits more than meets the department’s costs. The excess goes into the
general fund, only about one-third of which is paid by property taxes.
When a house is
suitable for reuse—that is, when it’s not too site-specific or doesn’t
require much remodeling—it is often cheaper to move it than to build new.
Niedrich said he lives in a 4,000-square-foot house moved to Hailey from Fairway
Road in Sun Valley. He said he spent $200,000 to relocate the house—far less
than the approximately $360,000 he would have spent to build it.
Much of the
expense in moving a house is to pay for pulling overhead power lines out of the
way. Niedrich said Idaho Power charged him $18,000 when he moved a house from
Ketchum to Buttercup Road, north of Hailey.
"You don’t
know for sure what the cost is going to be until it’s done," he said.