The Woodside Town Council on Tuesday voted to let Apple CEO Steve Jobs move forward with plans to demolish his historic 14-bedroom house in the Woodside hills.
In a 6-1 vote, with Mayor Peter Mason opposing, council members instructed town staff to update an environmental impact report and draft a demolition permit, which would enable Jobs to knock down the 17,250-square-foot Spanish revival mansion known as the Jackling House and build a much smaller home on the property. Those items will return to the council at its regular meeting June 9.
“I love old Spanish revival homes — I have a couple of them myself, and I’ve restored them,” Council Member Dave Tanner said at the meeting. “I can tell you it’s a thing of love.
“I didn’t see any reason to try to restore or maintain this house,” he said of the Jackling House.
Tanner cited the structure’s enormous size, associated heating and energy costs, as well as the town’s stated preference for smaller homes on large lots as reasons restoration don’t make sense.
Council Member Susan Boynton questioned why no previous owner had added the now-dilapidated building to a historic registry.
In the absence of such a designation, “we can’t force somebody to feel they have to preserve something,” Boynton said.
But Mayor Peter Mason, a licensed architect who has done historic preservation work, said he was saddened by the dwindling number of historic buildings in the area.
“It’s an unfortunate thing that Mr. Jobs doesn’t like the house,” Mason said. “It’s really sad that we’re going to continue to tear down historic resources in this town because they’re old.”
Architect George Washington Smith, known primarily for his work in Santa Barbara, built the home for copper mining magnate Daniel Jackling in 1925. Jobs bought the building in the early 1980s and lived there for about 10 years before renting it and then leaving it vacant.
He got permits from the town to demolish the sprawling building in 2004. But preservationists formed a group called Uphold Our Heritage and sued Jobs and the town, saying the initial environmental impact report didn’t demonstrate preserving the house would cost more than replacing it.
Last year Jobs submitted a renewed permit application with updated estimates indicating it would cost $13.3 million to restore the Jackling House versus $8.2 million to build a new 6,000-square-foot home.
Preservationists have questioned that cost estimate and have said Jobs and his attorney, Howard Ellman, didn’t put enough effort into finding someone willing to move and restore the house. They also say Jobs intentionally let the home fall into disrepair.
Photographs posted on the Web site Flickr by a user who apparently broke into the home show crumbling walls, an enormous pipe organ, sweeping staircases and various items strewn about, including a book on “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.”
“From my professional perspective, it doesn’t seem all efforts were exerted to find a prospective buyer for the house,” Anthea Hartig, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Western Office, said at the meeting, referring to the mansion as “one of California’s masterpieces.”
Ellman vehemently denied that claim at the meeting Tuesday, saying he even stood to lose a bet with Jobs that he could find a suitable buyer for the home.
“My client desperately wanted to make a deal to get rid of this house and get it preserved,” Ellman said. “I was the guy who had to deal with the 100-plus people who came forward with their wacky ideas,” including turning the structure into a monastery in San Juan Bautista.
Clotilde Luce, president of Uphold Our Heritage and a former resident of the home, described the building as “possibly more interesting” than Smith’s Santa Barbara work because the large size of the lot gave the architect greater freedom.
Asked by The Daily News whether her group planned to pursue further legal action, Luce replied, “We already sued, and we won.”
“I wish (the council) had paid attention to the law,” she said.
E-mail Jessica Bernstein-Wax at jbernstein@dailynewsgroup.com.
