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Apples and Onions

     We have all seen them around town, a behemoth house in a neighborhood of smaller houses, a ranch house placed on an empty lot in an historic neighborhood or a fourplex tucked in sideways in an area with single family homes.  These are all examples of questionable in-fill housing. This year the Heritage Society has worked to raise awareness about in-fill housing.

     As an exercise in spotting “inappropriate in-fill” we followed the route of the1957 Fargo tornado and identified buildings that did not seem to match the rest of the neighborhood. We then used the city of Fargo website to see when the structure was built and found that most were built between 1958 and 1962, the years immediately following the storm. Fifty years later, the legacy of inappropriate in-fill survives.

     With that exercise in mind, the board made contact with Peg O’Leary, the director of Historic Preservation in Grand Forks. Her organization played an important role in setting appropriate design standards for new homes in older neighborhood following the 1997 flood.  On November 8th the Heritage Society held the Apple and Onion Awards to recognize good and bad work on in-fill housing in historic neighborhoods.  Peg O’Leary described the work and the standards Grand Forks has adopted and Dawn Mayo, from the Fargo Planning Office, discussed the Historic Overlay District in Fargo.  It was very interesting to note the differences and similarities in the two programs.

     Another highlight of the event was Shirley Dykshoorn’s (Executive Director of the F-M Habitat for Humanity) discussion of some of the new design standards that Habitat for Humanity may include in upcoming local projects.  The event was capped off by the awarding of onions to numerous fourplexes in historic neighborhoods and to several of the 1957 in-fill buildings.  Apples were given to the Paula Rae Homes, for building appropriate looking structures on small empty lots around Fargo and to Fargo North High School for a house students helped build in the Roosevelt Neighborhood in Fargo. 

    The board of the F-M Heritage Society is hopeful that both the cities of Fargo and Moorhead will adopt more stringent in-fill housing guidelines for historic neighborhoods. We will continue to pursue this issue with the leaders of both communities.