The long awaited land appraisal for the Dog House Tavern is finally complete, and the solution to reopening the Langley landmark may be a “reduced value” property swap.
Tavern owner Charlie Kleiner said in a phone interview that he and wife Janice Kleiner sent the appraisal to the city Feb. 24.
“I have an engineer waiting, I have an architect waiting,” Charlie Kleiner said. “I’m just waiting for a building permit. We are held up on this property issue.”
According to the appraisal by Jim Dodge, senior appraiser at Everett-based Macaulay and Associates, there are no known real estate transactions to compare with. Dodge wrote that because the proposal between the Kleiners and the city is for an exchange of property rather than money, “a specific value estimate is not necessary.”
The Kleiners have asked the city for ownership of the 500-square-foot, 50-feet by 10-feet space under the building’s western exterior stairs and deck. The city owns an easement on the property for people to get in and out of the restaurant area of the building. The First Street door is for the lounge, which excludes minors. In exchange, the city would get property to add to Seawall Park, which the owners argue is worth more than the section under the stairs.
Langley has requested that, if the city agrees to trade that property to the Kleiners, it remain undeveloped and that the stairs and deck remain intact. But Kleiner says the city’s requests seem more like demands.
“They’ve got us over a barrel,” he said. “They tell us we’ve got to preserve that deck and staircase, we’ve got to preserve it.”
Langley and the building owners have gone back and forth for years over the steps required to renovate and reopen the former and much-beloved bar and restaurant. Most recently, the city declared an emergency ordinance to stop receiving demolition permits for buildings on the National Historic Register after the Kleiners inquired about the process in May 2014.
Halting demolition plans gave the city time to come up with a process and checklist. Instead of seeing beloved buildings bulldozed at an owner’s whim, a series of requirements must be passed before demolition would be approved by the city.
At the request of Mayor Fred McCarthy, the Kleiners agreed to reopen discussions with the city about keeping the building intact. The mayor forwarded the appraisal to the planning director and said he had more questions.
“I’m not drawing any conclusions from it yet,” McCarthy said in a phone message to The Record. “We want some clarification from them. It’s not clear to me that that satisfies our interests.”
Now, the proposal before the city is to gain 175 square feet at the north end of the Kleiners’ property. The new land would add to the city’s Seawall Park area, a strip used for emergency access near the beach and a popular walking area with benches looking out toward Camano Island.
In addition to the 500-square-foot area, the Kleiners are seeking a 3-feet by 40-feet sliver to straighten their property line.
The exchange of 620 feet from the city for 195 feet from the Dog House Tavern owners is not a straight across swap, but the valuation proposed by the appraiser reduced the value of the space under the deck because of the city’s restricted use. His calculation is for 15 percent of the 500 square feet, leading to the 75 square-foot total.
