Vote looms for Wilson Island historic district

Published online on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009

A five-year campaign by a Tower District neighborhood culminates Thursday when the Fresno City Council considers declaring it a historic district.

The Wilson Island area — roughly bounded by Echo, Carmen, Floradora and Wishon avenues south of Fresno High School — dates to 1908 and once housed a young city’s business elite.

Today it is home to dozens of longtime residents who prize its big old houses on large lots, and want to protect its character.

“I think the recognition it gets through this designation is the primary motivation,” said attorney Bruce Owdom, who has lived since 1982 in a Carmen Avenue house built in 1925. “I just want to pass it on to somebody who will take care of it.”

As a practical matter, the change may have little effect. It will make it harder to get permission to tear down a house, but altering its appearance already is controlled by special Tower District rules.

But historic status would also give homeowners a way to seek relief from development standards and building code provisions that might conflict with preservation on issues like parking, setbacks and building height, said Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city’s historical preservation project manager.

If approved, Wilson Island would be the city’s third historic district. The others are Chandler Airport with its Depression-era buildings, and the Porter Tract, roughly bounded by Weldon, Maroa, Yale and College avenues just north of Fresno City College. A district for the Huntington Boulevard area is under consideration.

The council also is scheduled to vote Thursday on historic status for two houses at 164 N. Echo Ave., just north of Divisadero, and an individual home in the proposed Wilson Island district. Five other houses in the district already have that designation on the Local Register of Historic Resources.

Landscape architect Bob Boro, who lives in a Wilson Island house built by his grandfather, said 66 of the proposed district’s 80 households have signed letters of support. A few exceptions “wouldn’t sign because they see this as a property rights issue,” he said.

One letter of opposition has been presented to the council from attorney Jon Renge, who wrote that historic status “would restrict how I want to remodel my property as I see fit.” Renge did not respond to a request for further comment. The city says limits on remodeling would be little changed.

The neighborhood’s name is derived from its initial street layout, when Echo and Wishon did not connect to McKinley Avenue.

Gay Amend has lived in Wilson Island for 45 years and says its range of architecture creates “a mixed neighborhood which everybody enjoys.”

Amend said she went door-to-door collecting signatures for the historic designation.

“I just think it’s very important that these homes be kept as close to their original state as possible,” she said, “that their architectural integrity be kept in place and that they be handed down to the next generation.”