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Letters
Expensive remodels are ugly and vulgar
This is an open letter to all of the developers and homeowners who are building homes that encroach on the aesthetics of existing neighborhoods.
You are lucky. You can do practically what you want because of city zoning regulations which do nothing to protect the aesthetics of some of San Jose's most beautiful neighborhoods.
To those of you who have nearly destroyed Cherry and Camino Pablo with your monuments to greed, have you ever stood back and looked at how your house fits in with the rest of your neighbors? What does your conscience tell you? Have you ever considered your neighbors' feelings, now that your structure throws shadows over their backyards and gardens?
It's funny, but you "nouveau" homeowners and developers care a lot about your privacy. You are very private people. Doesn't your behavior strike you as slightly hypocritical?
For years some of us have been asking the Planning and Building Departments of San Jose to introduce zoning regulations to prevent reconstructions like yours from happening. Luckily for you, they have not proposed a single change to the code for structures within existing neighborhoods. Why not, they do not say.
But it has something to do with money. And for those of you throwing money around building the biggest houses you can, remember that your money doesn't talk, it swears.
Shame on you.
Jerry Alvin
San Jose
All mini-mansions are not created equal
I do not agree that all remodels or building of the "mini-mansions" in Willow Glen are horrible. Some are quite nice and I appreciate that they help to continue to diversify the neighborhood and increase the value of my property.
I have no problem with the big Victorian being built on Cherry and Minnesota. There are already oversized Victorians on Minnesota and at least one on a similar small lot.
I don't know how to further explain what I find objectionable--or ugly, as it were--about some of the newer homes being built or some of the remodels. I can mention again the big gray one on Cherry with no garage that was built within the last year and already looks "slum-like," and the numerous remodels that are always modernized in a tract-like way, painted gray with porches or overhangs with tiny little poles ostensibly holding the structure up but that are truly out of scale. I also dislike the remodels that are "box-like," because the goal was just more room rather than more room and improving the appearance of the existing structure. Not all the older homes in Willow Glen were beautiful!
I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I also know that, through education, one can be trained to see and recognize beauty and scale.
K. Burnett
San Jose
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
