How Much Demolition and Infill is Going on in City Neighborhoods?
City Planning Commission requested an analysis of tear down and infill housing, and staff delivered at meeting last week.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Since 2020, 53 new homes have been built on infill lots in Fredericksburg City, but just four of them were constructed following the demolition of an existing structure.
The Fredericksburg Planning Commission asked city staff to research tear down and infill housing in the city over the past five fiscal years, and Community Development Planner Bailey Thompson presented the findings to the commission at its meeting last week.
Three of the four new homes that were constructed following demolition are more than twice the size of the structures they replaced. The building value of the infill homes and the land value also increased.
“The trend you’ll notice is that square footage goes up by a pretty good amount,” Thompson said.
Planning Commission members said they’ve seen a trend in other parts of the country—specifically Tampa, Florida, and Arlington, Virginia—of tearing down older, often one-story homes and replacing them with houses that are outsized compared to the rest of the neighborhood.
“I’ve always been concerned about the fact that we have very few controls over this,” said Chair David Durham. “I see homes being built in neighborhoods with modest houses—we just saw one in your presentation—where the houses that are infill are significantly larger.”
The four new constructions that followed demolition are at 300 Glover Street, 904 Brompton Street, 1600 Fall Hill Avenue, and 215 McKinney Street (where a structure was damaged by fire).
The structure on Glover Street was worth $15,000 before demolition, according to assessed value presented by Thompson. The new construction, underway this year, is assessed at $281,000 and increases the square footage from 608 to 1,422. The homes on either side of the infill home are assessed at $81,700 and $259,000.
The infill house on Brompton Street, built in 2020, increased in value from $109,200 to $686,000 and is double the size of the previous 1939 house. Neighboring properties are assessed at $247,300 and $438,820.
The Fall Hill Avenue house increased in value from $91,300 to $303,000. Neighboring properties are $136,200 and $141,800. The new home is “an outlier” among the other four, Thompson said, because the size is only increasing by about 200 square feet.
The McKinney Street infill house is 2,084 square feet—almost three times as big as the previous structure, which sustained fire damage—and assessed at $149,200.
Danae Peckler, preservationist with the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc., said during public comments that “investor-driven rapid growth in established neighborhoods can only exacerbate” issues of housing unaffordability.
“As time goes on, Fredericksburg neighborhoods will lose older, smaller, and more affordable housing,” she said. “Infill will impact the value of neighboring properties.”
Peckler said the adaptive reuse of older structures benefits the environment by keeping materials out of landfills and reducing the need for new construction and benefits the local economy by “spending more on labor than materials.”
“There are also affordability benefits,” she said. “Most existing affordable housing is unsubsidized, privately owned, and at risk. New construction can’t keep up with the demand for housing, and the majority [of new construction] is not affordable to low- and middle-income residents.”
Several existing city neighborhoods are exploring the idea of creating “conservation districts” in an attempt to prevent new development that is out of scale with its surroundings. These overlay zoning districts can be used to preserve and protect older areas within a community.
They might regulate features such as building height, setbacks, and streetscapes, but are not as restrictive as homeowner associations or historic preservation districts, Durham said.
Commissioner Adam Lynch said he wants to be “cautious about going down the road of conservation districts” because they seem like “a punitive and more negative solution.”
He said that instead, he’d like to explore the idea of preapproved pattern books.
“Cities essentially pay architects to develop plans for homes that are custom-made really for that city, for that particular neighborhood,” Lynch said. “Not every old house is a historic house. Demolition and rebirth are important parts of a healthy city but [this would be a way to make] sure those houses look like we want them to. Not like a McMansion.”
Chuck Johnston, planning department director, said staff are looking at “all these options,” to include conservation districts and pattern books.
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