Ousted Oakland house gets spot in nearby lot
The wheels of progress don’t typically slow down to save a small, old house on a corner lot, but there was something about this Oakland home.
It had a story, not a particularly historic or notable one, but rather the kind that makes a good movie. And this tale has a happy ending.
The peculiar house at 52nd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in North Oakland has sat on the same lot for 81 years, watching the roads get bigger, the BART tracks spring up, and the buildings and parking garage of the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland
grow around it, its aging owner refusing to sell. Over the decades, it had become a real-life version of Pixar’s “Up” house.
After the owner’s death, the hospital finally acquired the property and needed it to expand. The tiny home, like the “Up” house, was scheduled for demolition unless the hospital could find someone to pay the six-figure price to load the three-bedroom home on a truck and haul it away. Hospital officials held out little hope.
Out of the woodwork
But after a Chronicle article in June, interested house movers came out of the woodwork. The hospital was technically giving the home away, along with the $20,000 it would require to demolish it. But any potential takers would need a lot more cash and a nearby empty plot of land.
Nearly 100 interested parties stepped forward.
“We got a lot more response than we ever expected,” said Doug Nelson, the hospital’s executive director of development and construction. “We had a lot of good options.”
To be sure, some weren’t ideal. One person wanted to move the house — 30 feet in width — to Ukiah, clearly not understanding what was required in moving a whole house.
Instead, the hospital picked the perfect candidates, two couples who own a fourplex with a large piece of empty land zoned for a residential building just one block away.
On Sunday at the crack of dawn, the little house will be loaded on a truck, pull out of the driveway, cross under the BART tracks, turn left and travel a bit down the block to its new home.
David Stone remembers reading the newspaper story about the house one morning in June, feeling it was meant to be. Fate. Destiny. The stuff of storybooks.
“I instantly told my wife, ‘We’re going to get that house,’ ” said Stone, one of the new co-owners of the home. “I think
the house will be a very good fit.”
But it will take a lot more than fairy godmothers or balloons to move it. While the hospital gave the couples the house, “it’s not really free,” Stone said.
Costs add up
Moving the structure will cost $35,000, but first it cost $14,000 to cut out the basement, which isn’t going. There was another $18,000 for city permits. And once it arrives on the new site, it will need a foundation and upgrades to meet city building codes — another $100,000 or so.
“It’s costing more than we expected, but we’re still happy about it,” Stone said.
From its new perch at 817 51st St., the little house will be within sight of its old location.
Lawrence Bossola, the former owner who had refused to sell his childhood home, would be happy, said Al Gavello, of his friend.
Bossola died in 2001 at age 87. His parents built the house in 1934, and their unmarried son lived there his entire life, save for a stint in the Army during World War II. He loved the house. When the hospital came calling to buy the property, Bossola refused. When they asked again, he told them his dear, old mother was just too attached to it and they went away.
“He kept telling them she didn’t want to sell it, but she’d actually died years before that,” Gavello said, laughing at this friend’s ruse.
Bossola wasn’t angry or resentful, though. He also loved the hospital and all the urban activity that grew around him. He never resented the progress. He just didn’t want to leave.
And while the hospital has plans to build a $50 million, six-story outpatient office building on the site, no one wanted to tear the Bossola home down.
“Our goal is not to go around and demolish houses,” Nelson said. “It’s hard to imagine it working out better than what the plan is right now.”
Well, that’s not quite true.
Change of plans
Hospital officials had hoped to send the little house off with a big bunch of balloons tied to the top — a la Pixar — but it turns out balloons under the BART tracks, given the very small window of clearance, is a bad idea.
Were they sure? Did they measure it? “Twice,” Nelson said. So, no balloons. But still, it’s a fairy-tale ending for the little corner house.