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Work Resumes on Victorian Home
(Reprint of Grants Pass Daily Courier article, August, 2005.)
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George Jones is pictured at the 103-year-old Victorian house at Seventh and A streets he is remodeling for use as his personal home and office.
Photo Howard Huntington/Daily Courier |
By Howard Huntington
of the Daily Courier
The wait is over for everybody who has wondered when, if ever, work would resume on the lonely, boarded-up Victorian at Seventh and A streets in Grants Pass.
"People I meet, acquaintances, friends and their friends, ask me when I'm going to continue working on it," says George Jones. "I tell 'em to be patient."
Jones, of Grants Pass - not the country music star - started remodeling the 102-year-old house almost a year ago, but has been busy recently managing his other properties and his tree farm in Azalea.
Last year, he seemed to be getting sideways with the city.
Building official Carl Dependahl said jones indicated he wanted to convert the house into a multi-tenant commercial building, "which threw up a bunch of red flags.
"I think it was the fact that it threw it into the category of being a change of use, to where they (city planners) would want to do a very serious site review," Dependahl explains.
The city told Jones to stop work after doing some weatherproofing, but he didn't see it as a standoff.
The house came through the winter fine, he reports. "I feel that the whole town looks out for me here, and keeps people from messing with it," he says.
And he says, city officials are "really being very helpful to me," as he works toward making the house his own home and office.
"It's not the city at all holding me up. It's just that I have other projects, other work I do," he emphasizes.
Assistant city planner Jared Boice says a site plan review will not be required if Jones uses the house only as a residence. He would need a home occupation permit for a personal office, "but that wouldn't hold him up with his work on the house," Boice says.
Jones, who celebrated his 47th birthday last Saturday, estimates he is another year away from finishing the job.
With plans to retrofit windows and replace siding, he knows he'll be making too many exterior changes to qualify the house for the National Register of Historic Places.
But he's taking pains to preserve a lot of the interior trim because he has, well, a historical love of history. In 2000 he rescues another local Victorian that was more than 100 years old and sagging fast.
Right now, he's rebuilding one porch and adding another on the Seventh Street house, doing most of the work himself. He aims to finish the exterior, button up the house again this fall for a short break and then go back to work on the interior in January.
"It's a long term project. I could jump on it, get it all done, but then I would be out of work," he says, adding he also needs time out to climb mountains, ride his bike, and watch his 16-year-old daughter, McKenzie, run track at Hidden Valley High School.
Research shows the house was built in 1903 by John Kendall, an Englishman who had come here to be a miller. After he died in 1906 and his family moved out, the house went to the Milledge family, who were grocers. Jones bought it in 2003.
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