Metairie residents fume over towering house
07:54 PM CDT on Friday, October 3, 2008
Paul Murphy / Eyewitness News
When is a house not a home? When it looks like Craig Boes’ home, according to neighbors in Metairie's Harlem subdivision.
Video: Watch the Story “It's just not a home,” said neighbor Betty Wright. “It's not built like a home.”
Wright lives across the street from the new building now going up at the corner of Causeway Boulevard and 40th Street. The sheet-metal and steel structure towers over the mostly 1950s ranch-style homes in the neighborhood. Wright and the Causeway Civic Association complain the building is not in keeping with the single family residential zoning in the area.
“This particular area of Causeway has been under siege from certain parties who want this area to be commercial. This building is being built in such a manner that they are planning to use it for commercial use,” said Wright.
“I'm not looking to be the villain,” said building owner Craig Boes. “I think perception is part of the problem,” showing plans of what the building will look like.
“As you can see,” he said, “the ground floor is mainly garage and storage. The second floor is constructed with one, two, three, four bedrooms, living, dining room, kitchen laundry, baths, everything that you would expect to see in a residence.”
The Boes family owns a mid-city ironworks company, and, he said, “Since we're in the steel business, it's something that I'm very familiar with. A building such as this offers us the flexibility to do whatever we choose to do with the interior structures. I'm not limited by load bearing walls.”
At a recent Causeway Civic Association meeting, some parish officials actually called the structure an ugly metal building. The owner has now agreed to cover the exterior with brink and windows in an attempt to give it more of a residential facade.
“Nobody's going to want to live next door to that,” Wright said. “Whether he puts in fake windows, it still looks like a warehouse.”
Boes said Jefferson Parish building inspectors check on his project every day to make sure there are no code violations.
“If I had it to do over again and I'd know this was going to happen,” said Boes, “I probably would have just left it a vacant lot.”
Jefferson Parish attorneys took Boes to court to stop construction of the controversial building. They reached a consent agreement which requires the builder to move an exterior stairwell indoors and to replace commercial looking garage doors with ones that look more residential.
