Old Housing Project Gets New Life : Redevelopment: The city will renovate Heritage Court, fulfilling an architect’s dream of restoring vintage homes.

Architect John Kasperowicz had a plan to re-create a bit of old Pomona by obtaining Victorian houses about to be demolished, moving them onto a cul-de-sac he named Heritage Court and restoring them for sale.

But the project he began four years ago has become a financial disaster and an eyesore to neighbors. Vandals have smashed windows and scrawled graffiti on two partially renovated houses. A third home, with part of its roof missing, still sits on pilings. The fourth lot in the tiny subdivision is covered with weeds.

Heritage Court looks like a failed dream. But it is getting a second chance.

The Pomona Redevelopment Agency has agreed to buy the property from Imperial Thrift and Loan, which acquired it from Kasperowicz through foreclosure, and intends to finish the renovations, add a fourth house that was saved from bulldozers in Claremont and eventually offer the homes for sale.

The city action will carry out Kasperowicz’s concept of renovating the houses with modern electrical wiring, insulation and plumbing while retaining the built-in cabinets, staircases and other attractions of an older home. The project will save houses that otherwise might have disappeared with the battering of a wrecking ball.

“It’s still a great idea,” Kasperowicz said. “I’m sure the city will make money on it.”

But M. Margo Wheeler, the city’s development director, said the goal is not to make a profit, but to improve the area.

“There have been a lot of complaints,” she said.

The city will pay Imperial $347,990 for the three houses and four lots on Heritage Court, which is just south of the San Bernardino Freeway off San Bernardino Avenue, west of Towne Avenue.

Kasperowicz said he sank $300,000 into the project, but it was derailed by delays in obtaining development clearances and property titles and, ultimately, by economic conditions that made financing impossible.

Heritage Court will become the permanent home of a California Craftsman-style house that Pomona obtained from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont last summer. The city has been storing the house temporarily in a lot on Holt Avenue. Built in 1912, the home is a roomy, 2,500-square-foot bungalow with a number of distinctive features, including window ornamentation reflecting an Oriental influence.

It will be placed on Heritage Court beside three two-story homes of about the same vintage.

One of the houses, described by Kasperowicz as a colonial revival Victorian, was built in 1906 on 7th Street, across from the Pomona courthouse. Another was built in 1912 in a Craftsman and Swiss bungalow-style on Holt Avenue, near Eleanor Street.

Kasperowicz moved those two houses to Heritage Court four years ago and then moved in a third California Craftsman house from Upland.

Wheeler said the city is obtaining estimates on the costs of completing the renovations. A sound wall will be built along the freeway to block noise and other site improvements will be needed.

The price of the houses will not be set until the city determines the rehabilitation costs.

Wheeler said she believes the city can recoup its investment. “We think we’ve made a good deal,” she said.

Unlike a developer who has to be concerned with making a profit, she said, the city can afford to simply break even while eliminating blight from a neighborhood and providing good housing to four families.

Wheeler said the city should have no trouble attracting buyers. The Heritage Court location, on the outskirts of Lincoln Park, is one of Pomona’s best neighborhoods, she said.

The development should appeal to “anyone interested in owning historical houses,” she said. “These are really unique kinds of houses.”