West Central city Rep. Susie Byrd said the city’s mistake shouldn’t keep Jorge and Lisa Valenzuela from building their home in the Austin Terrace Historic District.

But she said the couple will have to file an administrative claim, which is one step short of a law suit, against the city before negotiations can start.

After what happened at Tuesday’s El Paso City Council meeting, Jorge Valenzuela said, the city won’t have to wait long. [npt background]

“We’re working on a claim right now with an attorney,” he said the day after the council sided with neighbors who challenged the Historic Landmark Commission’s approval of the designs for the Valenzuelas’ home after a city mistake had already allowed construction on the house to start.

The house, expected to cost $330,000 in all to build, would have been finished this month, Valenzuela said, and is so far along that any significant changes in design would be very expensive.

Tuesday, the head of the Development Services Department, Larry Nichols, said the building permit was issued because a computer system failed to recognize that the vacant lot on which the Valenzuela home was to be built lay inside the Austin Terrace Historic District. That meant the designs should have gone to the landmark commission for approval first.

On Wednesday, Byrd said she could not accept Nichols’ excuse.

“It has happened before and (City Manager Joyce Wilson) sent out a memo telling everyone to get it together,” Byrd said. “Even with that, we’re still not doing good enough.

“This is terrible. It means a department in the city is not training its plan checkers to be independent thinkers, and they’re relying too much on the computer.”

Valenzuela clearly disclosed in his application for a building permit that the lot was in the historic district and someone, Byrd said, should have noticed.

Early this year, Valenzuela obtained a building permit to build the 4,000 square foot home on a vacant lot in Central El Paso’s Austin Terrace, a proud neighborhood where fancy pre-Depression homes mingle with far more modest residences build after 1930 on streets lined with tall, old trees and lush front yards.

To preserve the character of the area, the residents sought the creation of a historic district where new construction and other changes would have to be approved by the city’s Historic Landmark Commission.

That safeguard failed in the Valenzuelas’ case, and the house was about a third finished when the city ordered a halt to the construction in March and then sent the designs to the commission for review.

Byrd said the commission was under pressure because of the city’s error when it voted 3-2 to tentatively approve the Valenzuelas’ designs for the only two-story house on their side of Pennsylvania Place with its big, two-car garage.

As designed, she said, that house isn't compatible with the neighborhood, which is why she offered the motion to approve the neighbors’ appeal.

The commission probably would have approved the designs on April 7, but the neighbors had already challenged the issuance of a certificate of appropriateness, sending the case to City Council.

On a 5-2 vote Tuesday, the council upheld the appeal.

David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup.com and (915) 351-0605