Geologist Herb Garcia and his family technically still live in the large old Victorian home at 1549 Minnehaha Ave. West, between Snelling and Asbury, or at least so he believes.
Garcia, who sold the house to Hamline University last year, has been tussling a bit with the school over the particulars of his year-long lease agreement, which the two parties arranged as part of the sale.
Hamline bought the 2,800-square-foot Victorian — which dates back to the 1880s — from his family for $220,000 last year, a relative steal despite the need for some obvious repairs. The agreement allows the Garcias to remain in the house for one year for $1, but different closing documents apparently spell out different sunset dates.
Garcia says the lease runs out August 15. Hamline maintains it ran out at the end of June, and the university had planned to demolish the home until neighborhood residents stepped in.
Demolition at 1549 Minnehaha appears to be on hold until at least sometime in August, but news that it was planned in the first place took Garcia by surprise this week. His family, which moved into the house in 1998 or 1999, still has personal effects there, though they’ve moved themselves to Roseville since the sale.
Garcia said he thinks it’s a shame to tear down one of the neighborhood’s oldest residential properties, which might even survive being put on a truck and hauled to a new location. But he’s not sorry to leave the block — the last family with kids moved out in 2003, and the last homeowner left around 2007 or 2008, he said.
As for the house itself…
“We were kind of slowly remodeling it from the inside out,” Garcia said on Tuesday, July 15. “We did put all new siding on it. There’s concrete siding that’s all brand new. It hadn’t been finished off, because it needs a deck. It has an all new roof, new windows in the back half of it, lots of new construction inside of it, new plumbing, new electrical. … The second floor is gutted in anticipation of drywall.”
Hamline, which tore down five homes on Hewitt Avenue this summer, plans to remove 1549 Minnehaha Ave. W. and at least 21 additional structures as part of its campus expansion to the south, according to its 5-year and 20-year plans.
It’s unclear exactly how quickly that would happen or what would be built in their place, but parking lots, student housing and green space are undoubtedly candidates.
“We have an 8-year-old kid,” Garcia said. “And Hamline has been buying all the houses on our block. There’s no neighbors anymore there. I think it’s unsuitable to ever be residential housing on that block — like ever. I’m not against them basically vacating the block.”
“So in the winter of last year, we just decided it was not worth continuing to do any remodeling on the house, just because we would never want to raise our kid on that block. … So we sold. But they didn’t want to come up to our price, so we agreed to a one-year lease in addition to the sale price.”
“That closed in mid-August of 2013. Which would bring us up to August of 2014 — but there’s kind of a dispute between Hamline and us as to when the lease goes to, because we struck the original agreement expecting to close at the end of June (2013) … so some of the documents say 1-year lease, and some of the documents say June 30.”
“We still have personal effects there. They needed to do some asbestos abatement. … We’ve long since moved out of there, but we still maintain some property, personal effects. We’re just kind of slowly moving it out.”
As for the university’s plans to demolish the old Victorian…
“It was a little bit of a shock. We knew that their intention eventually was to tear the house down, although that was never explicitly said. I didn’t know when. I expected that they were going to vacate the house from that property, one way or other. I didn’t know if they were going to demolish it or if they were going to move it.”
“Quite honestly, there’s no reason not to move it. I honestly don’t understand why they don’t work with the community a little bit better to move these houses, rather than demolish them, especially when we’ve had so many internal improvements already made. They could sell it to somebody for $1 and have it hauled to a nearby lot. Why not?”
But isn’t the house old and shabby?
“It had been obvious at one point over the (19)20s or maybe the 30s, it had become maybe a rooming house, because it had been broken into multiple rooms with locks and little kitchenettes.”
“When we went in there, it was basically a wreck inside. It had been broken up into little rooms and little kitchens on the second and third floors. We tore all that apart, we rebuilt the back because the back was falling apart, put all new windows into the back of the house. We probably put in around $90,000 in repairs. We completely rebuilt the back of the house — it had been rotting. New water and sewer lines, etc.”
“We were the only family on that entire block. The houses on all sides were basically vacant. I’m sympathetic, somewhat, to Hamline’s view of the future of that block. I don’t think they need to do it the way they are doing it. … I imagine it’s going to be a parking lot and green space.”
“We had all the information that we needed to restore it. Our intention was to restore it to a single-family home. But after $100,000 in repairs, and where the house was, and knowing the intention of Hamline on the block, there was just no point in pursuing that.”
Members of the Hamline-Midway Coalition will meet tonight, Tuesday, July 15, and the subject of the university’s expansion is likely to come up.