Opinion: I own a glamorous Palm Beach house. Allow me to remediate it, not let it crumble.
I’m a rabid believer in the preservation of rare properties. As an art professional, I understand how precious such archives are to the complexion, personality and physical and mental well-being of a town.
But Palm Beach’s proud history of extraordinary architecture gets more precarious each day. I speak to my experience while knowing this applies to almost all in my dire predicament.
I’ve owned in Phipps Plaza since 2019. I’ve spent $275,000 on remedial improvements while prepared to invest another $500,000.
Palm Beach is at crossroads. Today residents who buy landmark homes to provide “foster care” for special pieces of irretrievable history are in a no-win situation. Indirectly discriminated against by our town’s building, planning and zoning departments with the additional burden of time and money consumed in satisfying ARCOM committees, we can’t make a move. Why?
We can’t find contractors. We can’t find architects. We can’t find designers. We can’t find subcontractors.
We receive neither tax breaks nor incentives for stewarding the deferred maintenance present in all Palm Beach landmark homes. Instead we’re burdened with unreasonable, unendurable waits to find anyone to work on a landmark home. Given the choice, architects and contractors head for the hills if the choice is between working on a landmark or otherwise. Yesterday I thought I’d lost the fourth contractor who’d initially agreed to work on my house. Why? The landmark process.
Dry rot in my second-floor Bahamian balconies is more perilous everyday. No one will touch them. Even the smallest contractors won’t chance a potential money-pit of zoning red tape. Who needs this with so much other, more straightforward, work available? When I moved here this was not the case or I would not have bought. I certainly wouldn’t have picked a landmark house.
We have a crisis.
The confluence of Baby Boomers that overwhelmed our housing market 40 years ago still own the same landmark properties today. But neglect, financial straits or deferred maintenance have caused many landmarks to exceed their “expiration dates.” This type of owner, now a retiree, doesn’t as a rule begin building projects or let a homestead exemption lapse. They remain in unremediated, landmark homes. Now what? Let these gems crumble until we have no choice but to tear them down?
This is an historically unprecedented problem to which, apparently, no one has given any thought. It gets worse before it gets better, which happens only if preservationists think forward enough to bring the relief landmark homeowners need.
I own a glamorous Bahamian house with Gothic windows, multiple French doors, double staircases leading to Heaven but only reaching the pearly, wrought-iron gates if something on Earth in the 33480 zoning code changes.
Preservationists, please provide solutions, not just barriers to preserving our town’s authenticity. You must help us. We’ve no other recourse.
Carole "Silke" Christensen-Lieff is a resident of Palm Beach.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Opinion: Palm Beach preservationists must let us restore homes
