Goode House Repair Plans Fall Through

Termites and vandals may win the battle over the future of the Goode House in Glendale, officials said after the latest plan to save the historic home fell apart.

Southern California Presbyterian Homes last fall had offered to take over restoration of the 104-year-old house after a developer was unable to obtain financing. But that plan has collapsed.

“It just wasn’t economically viable,” said Gloria Paternostro, communications director for Presbyterian Homes.

“We needed to break even on the project--not make a profit, just break even--and we wouldn’t,” even with the city’s financial help, she said. “It was just that simple.”

Meanwhile, the house--Glendale’s last example of Queen Anne/Eastlake architecture--is on the verge of collapse, said city officials and developer Joe Ayvazi of Cedar Broadway Partnership. It has been stripped by vandals and by scavenger hunters and gnawed at by the elements. Officials joke that if the termites stop holding hands, it will surely crumble.

The Glendale Housing Authority last year pledged to spend up to $750,000 to help restore the house and build a 40-unit apartment complex for low-income seniors around it. The house was to be used as a recreation center in the $3.85-million project.

Madalyn Blake, director of community development and housing, said negotiations between the city and the Glendale-based nonprofit corporation ended last month. But she said the city is still talking with the property owner, Cedar Broadway Partnership.

Presbyterian Homes operates several senior housing projects in Glendale and is currently building two more, also being partly financed by the city.

The house, at 119 N. Cedar St., was the residence of Edgar D. Goode, a businessman who led the city’s incorporation drive in 1906. The city several years ago passed a historic preservation ordinance after another developer announced plans to raze the house and build apartments.

A building permit for the Goode House restoration project will expire next month, and no alternative proposal has been made, city officials said.

“The whole thing is going to die, after all of these years of work and all of the money spent,” Ayvazi said. Cedar Broadway Partnership bought the beleaguered landmark and adjoining properties in 1986 and 1987.

Although Ayvazi has declined to say how much the partners have invested in the property, he said the extent of vandalism has been severe. He blames the damage “partly on kids and partly on people who know the value of Victorian door handles and locks.” He said windows are broken and doors, hardware and stair rails have been stolen and the fireplace torn apart.

Over the years, a variety of plans to save the house by moving it or developing around it have been repeatedly opposed by members of the Glendale Historical Society and others. Preservationists argue that the house should not be moved because it would become ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Opponents also objected to Ayvazi’s plans to build around the house because they said the project would destroy the aesthetic integrity of the Victorian structure.

Ayvazi finally won city approval for the project in 1989 but was unable to obtain financing. After the city pledged to help, Presbyterian Homes offered to take over the project last October.

Ayvazi said he still plans to “contact the city and see if we can work something out, to see what options we can have or what the city is willing to do, to see if we can save it.”