Saratoga News

Subdivision developers will preserve Julia Morgan home

Current plans call for 15 homes on Spaich land

By Sarah Lombardo

Plans for the subdivision of property surrounding a historic Julia Morgan- designed home off Douglass Lane in Saratoga are moving ahead. City officials said an initial environmental report on the project is now in the works and will be available to the public Feb. 4. The project is tentatively scheduled to go before the Saratoga Planning Department at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 25.

The project calls for the subdivision of the Spaich property between Douglass Lane and La Paloma Road into 15 residential lots ranging in size from about half an acre to 1 1/2 acres. Currently, two homes stand on the property. One of the homes, a Julia Morgan design commissioned by the Chauncey Goodrich family, was built in the early 1900s.

But James Walgren, Saratoga community environment director, said the Julia Morgan home will not be demolished. Instead, the home will remain on a three-acre lot, but a gatehouse for the home and the other house on the property, designed by Saratoga architect Warren Hyde and built in the 1960s, will be demolished to make room for the subdivision.

Members of the Saratoga Heritage Preservation Commission were asked by Pinn Brothers Companies of San Jose, the company seeking approval for the subdivision, to review the plans for the area and see what impact it would have on the Julia Morgan home, according to commission chairwoman Beth Wyman. The commissioners, she said, were satisfied that the house would be left alone.

"The newer house is just not old or significant enough. Although it is a beautiful house, it is just a house," she said.

"As long as the [Julia Morgan] house is being preserved, I don't think there is much else we have authority over," Wyman added

Wyman did express disappointment at the idea of more development. "I think that the person who is living there now as well as the commissioners regret that that open space will no longer be open space," she said. "We're sorry to see that go."

Walgren said the city asked that the project include two cul-de-sacs, instead of through streets, between La Paloma Road and Douglass Lane to decrease the chance for cut-through traffic in the area--an issue that seems to be plaguing residents in other areas of the city, such as the Prides Crossing neighborhood..

Also included in the plans, Walgren said, is the establishment of pedestrian trails throughout the property and a planter easement that would block the view of houses that back up to each other and be kept up by a future homeowners association. In addition, the developer must create a riparian open-space easement along the banks of the Saratoga Creek, which runs through the property. The easement will prevent any development--from a pool to landscaping--near the banks of the creek.

The project has been almost a year in the planning stages. Representatives from Pinn Brothers have held meetings with neighbors to prepare them for the project and get their feedback, a move that Walgren said could make the initial public hearing for the project less emotional than some regarding subdivision projects have been in the past.

"I get the sense that there has been so much communication outside of this office that there won't be the same shocked reaction to the project that there might have been," he said.

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