Early Thursday morning, Nov. 2, northwest wind came strongly off Cayuga Lake ... another quiet day in Aurora ... until some rather large flatbed and rollback trucks diesel down Route 90 and park across from my house on Main Street, in the hitherto quiet village.
As I'm eating breakfast at the rear of my house, I hear the distinctive clatter of a caterpillar tread, moving something off a flatbed and a few very loud thumps, as something large is dropped. I figure that I'll go to see what is happening, after I finish my cereal and newspapers.
Lo, it is a wrecking company, come to remove the Lake House apartments, so the musical chairs of the House on Stilts can come to its conclusion.
Between nine o'clock and five in the afternoon, a large dragline, equipped with a very nasty claw on the end of the boom, eats the old building, and after segregating the metals, dumps the wreckage into 12-yard rollbacks, which shuttle back and forth throughout the day. At five o'clock, there is nothing left of a two story, five apartment building except a large pile of concrete slab fragments to be removed on the next business day.
Now, the new owners of the parcel where the Lake House was located can purchase and move the House on Stilts to a new foundation.
This continues a tradition of moving houses without regard to strict zoning regulations. The house, where I live almost directly across the street (Route 90) from the House on Stilts, has a long history in the village, having been moved twice before landing on its present site. Property lines were only guesses at the last move, as the bay windows on the north side of this house overhang the property line. The Masonic Lodge, on the driveway to the Lake House, has property lines which are three feet from the foundation on all four sides, and that lack of attention to good property lines goes back to antiquity as the cornerstone was laid by Governor Dewitt Clinton.
This is the old Aurora and is typical of the thinking which continues to 2006. This makes for keeping the village charming and authentic but flies in the face of good stewardship of tax parcels and regulated development.
Since the Lake House is on a previously existing, non-conforming parcel, the only way the use can be changed is by making the parcel conform to current zoning. This is not going to happen and continues a precedent already set.
That means anyone wanting to subdivide or change a parcel in a similar situation can legally do so, under the precedent.
So, this whole move is good for present sensibilities, but poor for future judgments. Vive la difference.
William Dugan is a former supervisor for the town of Ledyard
Lo, it is a wrecking company, come to remove the Lake House apartments, so the musical chairs of the House on Stilts can come to its conclusion.
Between nine o'clock and five in the afternoon, a large dragline, equipped with a very nasty claw on the end of the boom, eats the old building, and after segregating the metals, dumps the wreckage into 12-yard rollbacks, which shuttle back and forth throughout the day. At five o'clock, there is nothing left of a two story, five apartment building except a large pile of concrete slab fragments to be removed on the next business day.
Now, the new owners of the parcel where the Lake House was located can purchase and move the House on Stilts to a new foundation.
This continues a tradition of moving houses without regard to strict zoning regulations. The house, where I live almost directly across the street (Route 90) from the House on Stilts, has a long history in the village, having been moved twice before landing on its present site. Property lines were only guesses at the last move, as the bay windows on the north side of this house overhang the property line. The Masonic Lodge, on the driveway to the Lake House, has property lines which are three feet from the foundation on all four sides, and that lack of attention to good property lines goes back to antiquity as the cornerstone was laid by Governor Dewitt Clinton.
This is the old Aurora and is typical of the thinking which continues to 2006. This makes for keeping the village charming and authentic but flies in the face of good stewardship of tax parcels and regulated development.
Since the Lake House is on a previously existing, non-conforming parcel, the only way the use can be changed is by making the parcel conform to current zoning. This is not going to happen and continues a precedent already set.
That means anyone wanting to subdivide or change a parcel in a similar situation can legally do so, under the precedent.
So, this whole move is good for present sensibilities, but poor for future judgments. Vive la difference.
William Dugan is a former supervisor for the town of Ledyard