[MassHistPres] mpact of LHDs on RE values

[Dennis De Witt]

As the question of the impact of LHDs on RE values always comes up  
when an LHD is being proposed, the following from the New York Times  
is worth keeping on file.  Note the bold face paragraph.

Dennis De Witt



State Senator John Sabini, whose district includes Jackson Heights,  
has held public office for 15 years. One of his achievements came in  
1993, when, as a city councilman, he helped persuade the Landmarks  
Preservation Commission to designate the Jackson Heights Historic  
District.

But Mr. Sabini, a lifelong neighborhood resident, has never himself  
lived within the historic district. Nor is his local office, at 88th  
Street and 35th Avenue, located there. “I can’t afford it,” he  
explained, laughing.

When a historic district is born — the city’s 88th, Sunnyside  
Gardens, was approved on June 26 — its neighborhood frequently  
becomes two neighborhoods. The street signs within the district are  
terra-cotta rather than the standard green, but the distinctions go  
far deeper than signs, involving money, aesthetics, image, even class.

The Jackson Heights Historic District is an example.

“There are a lot of beautiful homes in that section that are not in  
other parts of the neighborhood,” said Pauline Conti, an owner of  
Century 21 House Depot, a real estate firm. “It’s an area where the  
prices always have been strong. As the market changes and as the  
market repositions itself, it won’t be as affected as much as other  
areas far from the historic district.”

A 2003 study by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that  
market values of properties in historic districts are higher and  
appreciate at a slightly greater rate than those outside historic  
districts. For example, the study, which covered the years 1975 to  
2002, found that the inflation-adjusted prices of properties within  
historic districts rose by an average of 5.3 percent a year, while  
those outside historic districts rose by an average of 4.2 percent.

And the difference involves more than money. To walk the few blocks  
from Little India and other undesignated sections of Jackson Heights  
to the historic district is to travel from humble, sometimes teeming  
streets to genteel serenity. The district, which comprises 538  
structures on 36 of Jackson Heights’s 200 blocks, sometimes feels  
like a different neighborhood altogether.

Within the district, the two- and three-story brick buildings in the  
Tudor and Georgian styles, most of which were built from 1910 to the  
1950s, are uniformly bordered by green lawns and black wrought-iron  
gates, concealing the spacious interior gardens within. Influenced by  
Europe’s Garden City movement, which aimed to avoid crowded tenement  
conditions, the district’s developers built the nation’s first  
cooperative garden apartments, as well as single-family homes in the  
English Garden style.

“The rich dudes in Manhattan used to bring their mistresses here,” Wu  
Ming Zhang, who has lived in the neighborhood for a decade, said of  
the historic district. “They’d tell their wives they’d be gone for  
the weekend on business.”

Daniel Karatzas, the author of the book “Jackson Heights: A Garden in  
the City” and an agent at Beaudoin Realty Group, has found that  
apartment buyers from outside the neighborhood not only call him but  
even know the names and details of the Queen Elizabeth, the Fillmore,  
the Belvedere and other individual buildings in the district.

Mr. Karatzas said that storefronts on several blocks skirting the  
historic district voluntarily adhere to the district’s aesthetic  
standards, using awnings of only one color on a block, rather than  
what he called the “mishmash” seen on thoroughfares outside the  
district. “There’s a reflected glory,” he said.

Like those few blocks of amenable storefronts, the exterior of Mr.  
Sabini’s office pays subtle homage to the district of which it is not  
a part.

“My awning is in compliance with historic district rules.” He paused.  
“I think it is. We made it forest green, which is one of the  
acceptable colors.”