EDITORIAL:Old homes should cede to senior center

The community is still split on the issue of whether to build the senior/community center, with many arguing that the long-planned project is “a done deal” that must move forward or it will be lost, and others — mostly adjacent residents — making the claim that the project will ruin their area and destroy an irreplaceable “neighborhood” of historic homes.

One idea being circulated is that the collection of old structures on Third Street could be recycled for use as a senior center. But this is impractical, if not laughable. How are elderly people, some in wheelchairs and in walkers, supposed to get in and out of these dilapidated buildings with steep staircases and small rooms?

The city has been trying to give the six old homes away, but so far the only person offering to take all six off the city’s hands is the owner of a parcel on Canyon Acres that has been proposed for development for years — to the intense opposition of its neighbors.

The Third Street collection does include some charmers, such as the 1920s surveyor’s cottage, a California Bungalow structure with pressed-tin kitchen ceiling and cozy built-ins and the magnificent bougainvillea that covers it. But the place — as the current occupant says — is so termite-ridden it’s “being held up by the bougainvillea.”

That house, and some of the others, were built long before modern building codes, not to mention earthquake standards.

The surveyor’s cottage, it is said, was built from a Sears & Roebuck kit — it’s a mail-order house built from light materials that somehow have survived to this day.

We hope a “home” can be found for at least a few of these old structures and that they can be retrofitted for some modern use, but it doesn’t look promising.

In the event they can’t be relocated, the argument goes, the senior/community center should be halted or another spot found for it.

But we don’t really think that “preservation” is the real issue here at all.

The folks who live above Third Street and look down on the green landscape of “historic” homes would like a better view than would be afforded by a modern structure. They certainly don’t want the noise of a busy community center within earshot.

These “quality-of-life” concerns are real, but solving them would require halting a project that will be a huge public benefit for all the city — and increase exponentially the quality of life for some of our most vulnerable residents.

At some point, the historic homes must give way to progress.