The North Avenue Situation

Figure 1. The Current Map

Prologue

In the western corner of North Avenue and North Main Street in the Madison Historic District sits the former Adcock house, now owned by Selwyn Hollis. Next door on North Main is the Billups-Tuell House, owned by Sally and Grady Tuell. On North Avenue there is a 2.2 acre parcel owned by Everett Royal’s Consolidated Properties company (outlined in red in Figure 1). That property abuts the properties of both Hollis and the Tuells. The remaining property up to the railroad crossing, about one acre, is owned by Algin Realty. On each of those properties there is one historic house. The Algin property has another small house that was built in 1972.

The point where North Avenue intersects North Main now contains a small city park, behind which sits a Golden Pantry convenience store and gas station, which is non-conforming with the 2011 Zoning Ordinance in multiple ways, including very bright, unshielded, all-night fluorescent lights. Further down the hill, there used to be a Dairy Queen that in the ’70s was a popular hangout among teenagers. That same building housed a Pizza Hut in the ’80s and now houses a used car dealership. Main Street Veterinary Clinic has recently relocated to the Eatonton Road commercial strip. Fortunately Tequila’s Mexican Grill remains a real plus for the neighborhood.

This entire area was long neglected by the city and allowed to reach a sad state. It is a challenging place to live due to high levels of traffic—including many large trucks on North Avenue carrying freight to and from the industries in the Airport Industrial Park—and the blaring horns of trains as they approach the North Avenue crossing.

But some good things have begun to happen on this frontier of Madison and the Historic District. At least three homeowners have made significant investments in the refurbishment or rehabilitation of historic homes in the last decade. At long last, the city has recently demolished two long-abandoned, derelict houses on College Drive. That cleared the way for the new Lambert Park in the northeast corner of North Main and College Drive, which eventually should be a wonderful anchor for this end of town. The city plans to concentrate on rehabilitating this gateway into Madison in the coming years—which likely is the reason why realtors/developers are now showing such an interest in building as many houses as possible along North Avenue.

Recent History: A Timeline

Late 2006
Grady and Sally Tuell began a faithful, extensive, and structurally challenging restoration of Grady’s family home, the Billups-Tuell House (circa 1853). This project was completed in 2008.

2007
Everett Royal purchased for $165,000 the 2.2 acre North Avenue property outlined in red in Figure 1. Between 1944 and 1999, that property was owned by Mary Hogan, Grady Tuell’s grandmother.
The “Adcock house” next door (built in 1900), situated in the western corner of North Main and North Avenue, which had been vacant and neglected for several years, was sold by the Adcock family to This Old South, LLC.

2008
After a brief, partial attempt at renovating the house, This Old South abandoned the Adcock house amid the housing market collapse, leaving it gutted and in dire, but basically sound, condition. The Bank of Madison obtained the property through foreclosure.

2009
Everett Royal tried to get his recently acquired property rezoned from R-1 to R-2. That application was rejected by city council in a unanimous vote.

Somewhere around the same time, the house on Royal’s property was renovated, and the ¾ acre lot on which it now sits was sliced away from the original lot. (See the dashed red line in Figure 1.) Oddly, that lot didn’t extend all the way back to the railroad, so the remainder of the lot became a “flag lot.”

2010
Grady and Sally Tuell purchased the Adcock house from the Bank of Madison in order to protect their investment in the Billups-Tuell House.

2011

Selwyn Hollis purchased the Adcock house from the Tuells and began an extensive rehabilitation of the house, which was completed in early 2012.

2012
Everett Royal put his ¾ acre lot and house up for sale. Since then it has been up for sale off and on, had three renters, and stood vacant about half the time.

The Lead-up To The Current Situation

As we mentioned above, Everett Royal tried to get his North Avenue property rezoned from R-1 to R-2 in 2009, and his application was rejected unanimously by city council. According to the minutes of those meetings, the basis upon which it was denied was that his rezoning application did not meet a number of the standards delineated in the 2011 Zoning Ordinance.

Then, in late 2016, at the suggestion of city staff, Royal teamed up with Algin Realty (who own the northern part of the triangle between Royal’s property and the railroad crossing) to put forth new, simultaneous applications to rezone from R-1 to R-2 the entire triangle between the Hollis and Tuell properties and the North Avenue railroad crossing. Royal wrote in his application that he had been advised by city staff that “if all three residential properties on the street were presented at the same time, R-2 would be acceptable.”

Owners of the adjacent property (Hollis and the Tuells) vigorously objected, citing the 2009 rejection of a similar application as well as other objectionable parts of the new application, in particular a site plan that indicated the creation of a “key”/“stovepipe”/“T” lot on which a duplex would be built near the rear western corner of the lot, close to the railroad tracks and the Hollis/Tuell property lines. (See Map #1.)

Map #1

City council was advised by city staff that the site plan accompanying the application was non-binding and that such details would somehow be dealt with in later parts of the process. In spite of the neighbors’ objections, the rezoning application was approved unanimously.

The Current Kerfuffle

In May of 2017, Everett Royal asked the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) to write a letter of support for a new plan for again building two additional houses on his property, but this time with the new houses facing North Avenue with the same set-back from the street as the existing historic house. For this he would need a relatively minor variance on Tracts 2 and 3 to the 100-foot minimum lot width (not street frontage) required of R-2 zoned lots. Map #2 below is the map he presented.

Map #2

Hollis and the Tuells viewed this as a reasonable and sensible compromise, given that the property had already been rezoned to R-2 and that Royal is apparently intent upon building two additional houses. The HPC agreed and wrote the letter Royal requested.

Unfortunately, by the time Royal’s application was on the agenda of the Planning and Zoning Commission, he had substituted a different map—causing great confusion. Here’s Map #3:

Map #3

On this new map, Tract 1 from Map #2 has been divided into Tracts 1 and 4, where part of Tract 4 is a narrow strip along the Hollis property line. Royal asked the Planning and Zoning Commission for a lot-width variance for Tract 1 along with the previous requests for Tracts 2 and 3. Fortunately, this change was noticed in time, and the Planning and Zoning Commission sent city staff back to Royal to request that he provide an explanation of this change and to address other missing items in his application—items demanded in no uncertain terms by the 2011 Zoning Ordinance.

Next, Royal went back to the HPC with another presentation. In an attempt at clearing up confusion, he submitted yet another map! Here’s Map #4:

Map #4

You’ll notice that Map #4 is the same as Map #3, except that Royal has simply erased Tract 4. The HPC took no position on the variance request for Tract 1.

Next the application went to the Planning and Zoning Commission with Map #4. (Three of the commission members present were absent at the previous meeting, and the commission chairman, who was at the previous meeting, was absent for this one.) City staff provided little in the way of context and prodded the commission to focus narrowly on Tracts 1, 2, and 3 and to ignore the mysterious Tract 4. Still, the Commission chose not to approve the application. Neither did they reject it; they sent it on to city council without approval.

So here we are. And so it goes. This will be on the agenda of the August 14 meeting of the Mayor and Council.

Epilogue

When we saw Map #3, we began to wonder whether this had something to do with the city’s future plans for a system of trails. Eventually we asked city planner Monica Callahan about it. She referred us to the chair of the Trails Committee of Greenspace Commission, who informed us that she knew nothing of it. She enquired about it at the next meeting of the Greenspace Commission, and, lo and behold, the chair of the Greenspace Commission had indeed been in communication with Everett Royal about possibly, one day, “years down the road,” putting a trail through Royal’s North Avenue property. Unfortunately, Royal’s idea is to put it along the neighbors’ property lines, which would do real harm to their privacy and enjoyment of their yards.

But the larger issue here and now is whether the city council will approve a zoning variance for no actual reason, only a property owner’s vague notion of something he (together with the city) might do at a later date, something that the adjacent homeowners will object to under the zoning ordinance and all applicable law.