It’s your house. So why does Columbia get to call the shots on what you do with it?

New windows, new gutters, new siding and a new front door.

Nino Colarossi has modest plans for the little yellow house, one of several he’s seen sit in disrepair in the Seminary Ridge neighborhood in north Columbia that he’s called home for 14 years.

So when he got the chance to fix up the house – “to make a difference in our community,” he says – he bought it earlier this year. But just a few months into his renovation project, Columbia officials brought down the hammer on Colarossi’s plans, putting a halt to almost all work on the house that he plans to sell.

He’s run into a blockade many homeowners face in some of the city’s historically significant neighborhoods.

More than a dozen Columbia neighborhoods have special designations meant to preserve historically significant architecture and character. But the flip side of preservation is a set of challenging – and sometimes expensive – restrictions beyond normal building codes that dictate what homeowners can do with their own houses.

So if you want to enclose the porch on your Cottontown house, paint the brick on your Melrose Heights home, put a single front door – rather than two – on a new house in the Granby Mill Village, or replace the windows on your Seminary Ridge house, the choice is not your own.

And in many of those cases, Colarossi’s for one, the answer from Columbia officials is a rigid “no.”

“They decide what you can or can’t do to that house,” a frustrated Colarossi said. He’s a contractor by trade and no stranger to home construction. “Windows, doors, siding, none of that stuff can be changed unless they deem it so bad that it has to be replaced.”

Window replacement is one of the biggest points of tension between renovating homeowners and the city.

In most of its historic preservation districts, the city won’t allow the replacement of original windows unless they are more than 50 percent beyond repair.

That’s because “those materials are often of a quality and durability that you can’t buy today,” said Amy Moore, the city’s principal preservation planner. Those materials should be preserved and repaired, not replaced, as much as possible, she said.

“There’s a lot of hype out there about vinyl windows,” Moore said. “But the wood windows out there are of a greater density of wood. When those windows are intact, they’re going to last for another hundred years, and all we have to do is paint them and repair them. They were made to be repaired,” not replaced.

But for homeowners like Colarossi and some of his Seminary Ridge neighbors, who live not far from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and Hyatt Park, the city’s restrictions can mean dealing with drafty windows and high energy bills.

Energy-efficient vinyl windows would be a more practical fix and more attractive than storm windows on top of original windows, some homeowners believe.

And despite the neighborhood’s 5-year-old historic restrictions, about a third of the houses in the neighborhood already have vinyl windows, according to resident Mike Kimble’s assessment.

For many homeowners, these windows and other historic home renovation frustrations come down to issues of cost, Kimble said.

“This neighborhood really can’t afford to do that kind of work on a home here,” said Kimble, who says he has been told he can’t replace the windows on his home or the siding on the house he owns across the street.

Other neighborhoods face similar renovation challenges.

A Wales Garden homeowner recently went to court – and won – over the city’s attempt to block him from replacing old windows and doors at his home, Free Times reported. A judge ruled that the city’s renovation restrictions were not well enough publicized.

For Mary Curtis Twitty, who bought a 75-year-old house in Melrose Heights about two months ago, replacing her new home’s old windows was not worth the trouble of jumping through the city’s hoops. Instead, she just boarded up the worst ones.

She can appreciate preserving historic features, but there has to be some balance with a homeowner’s needs, Twitty said.

“I love the look of an old house, but if you’re not comfortable inside” it’s not worth it, she said.

Despite the sometimes frustrating restrictions on house work, the city’s historic guidelines play an important role in preserving the unique character of certain areas and protecting the investments of property owners, Moore said.

And the neighborhoods with historic designation at some point or another made the choice on their own to establish those designations and rules.

“The houses all tell a story, and they tell a story about the development of an area,” Moore said. “That sense of place is a huge draw for people. ... There’s a reason people want to live there, because that sense of place has been preserved.”

Seminary Ridge could become a rare case of a neighborhood repealing its architectural designation. At a recent neighborhood association meeting, the majority of residents present voted to start the process of repealing or changing their historic status.

That won’t please everyone, though.

Deb McQuilkin has made her home in the neighborhood for more than a decade. Her husband’s family built some of the original houses there. She’s vice president of the neighborhood association. And she thinks many of the houses’ old features are “cute.”

“I think we destroy our historical features only too quickly for the sake of saving money,” McQuilkin said. “We need to build within the history of the neighborhood. There’s tremendous potential. We could be the next Elmwood or Cottontown.

“There’s potential I’d hate to see lost for the sake of cheap housing.”

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 10:07 AM with the headline "It’s your house. So why does Columbia get to call the shots on what you do with it?."